Riders

This is so badly made. From the opening shots of the naughty lead putting his jodhpurs on in the opening title and then the frankly inept exposition of the 'spying' episode you know you are in for a shockingly bad ride technically.

That said, it's so funny it's worth watching. Stocked up with characters like 'Humpty Hamilton' and ridiculous exposition it's a treat. They don't really make them like this anymore, with dodgy voice over at the start of each scene, cross fades and some of the worst acting you'll see. It's laugh out loud funny for every minute.

The score is hilarious as well. Every time anyone gets the least bit sexy the sax goes full 80's. :) Good for a rainy Sunday.

It surprised me to find only two reviews of this film so far. Bearing in mind that the source novel was on the best-sellers list for ages and selling over a million copies, this film version seems to have been massively overlooked. It is not a bad film but for me, it does not live up to the bonkathon tag much hyped by the popular press.

The characters were well presented and one could not fault the cast in their acting but there was the nagging feeling that the equine world of this film was not a world most people would have noticed had it not been for certain royal personages to be involved in equine events. Still, the horse riding scenes were well done with the stunt people and the actors merging seamlessly together.

The biggest problem for me however was the running time of almost 200 minutes - too long for a film. My feeling is, a mini-series would have been better.

It's always difficult to capture a book as complex as this on-screen as Jilly Cooper's speciality is showing us a set of larger than life characters with genuine human flaws, however within the limitations of film I think they did very well. Yes, OK, they did take a few shortcuts through the plot, but (mostly) that didn't make too much difference to the characterisation and relationships. The lead actors were good and, in particular, Michael Praed as Jake Lovell was extremely engaging and well-realized.

A film which dwells _so much_ on showjumping would fail completely if the riding scenes were not well done, and I'm pleased to say that they were entirely believable and the lead actors genuinely looked as though they knew how to sit on a horse. Congratulations to the stunt team and to the actors.

After enjoying the disneyplus adaptation of Rivals, I decided to read the fantastic Riders and see how this adaptation handled the first book in the series.

It's dreadful. Everything that made the book great is entirely absent in this tv movie. The performances across the board are extremely poor, which makes me wonder what the direction entailed and if this production was rushed.

Character assassinations are completed on Jake, Billy, and even RCB. RCB is simply not evil enough, and the script has heavily sanitized the source material. Particularly in the latter half, the plot is entirely changed, with some romances not happening, or partners being switched around.

This thing is 3 hours and 19 minutes long. Getting through it is a feat of endurance, I wouldn't recommend. I hope that one day, Riders gets the adaptation it deserves.

This was shown on ITV when I was about 14. Not a lot to see or hear on this one, a lot of humping and the lead character (can't remember who exactly) seemed to just bone around all day with countless upper crust women. Being only 14 at the time it was just a question of waiting for the next bit of raunchiness to come along. See those duff Friday night movies on Five? This is a distant relative with a bit more storyline!