George and Mildred

George & Mildred - The Movie lacks the talents of its TV writer John Mortimer who brings the close quarter cut and thrust of George's class war with the Fourmiles alive.

The plot is cut from standard spin-off cloth - hit-man/mistaken identity - and has as little tension as there are laughs. The producers should have taken a leaf from Rising Damp, (also 1980)which was also bought to the big screen after the TV series demise, and kept much of the story in familiar setting.

Yootha Joyce died in 1980 but she should not be remembered for this creaking piece of work encumbered as she was by her illness. Mildred lacks the sharpness of her TV incarnation; cutting asides and withering looks largely directed at Georges lack of libido. George's sputtering incredulity also gets lost in the more expansive sets. This is not to say that they were much to shout about. The budget for this movies looks pathetically small; a restaurant they go to is clearly a new semi-starched house with some Christmas lights adorning the front door.

For fans of 70's British comedy or those who just want to revisit an old TV companion from their youth this film can add nothing to the experience and they should just stick to the first four TV series out now on DVD.

I've always found this film odd to watch as Yootha Joyce passed on before it's release and her last on screen moment being a wink to the camera before switching off the light heading upstairs (another series on TV was planned before her untimely death).

Sadly the plot leaves the usual TV storylines (and for the most part excludes their neighbours the Fourmiles) for a mistaken identity plot (where George is mistaken for a hitman!).

The guest cast can't help the film from being on of the worst sit-com spin-off films as well as being one of the final (with Rising Damp) damp squibs of the genre (Future feature length adaptations such as Last Of The Summer Wine and Only Fools and Horses would be TV specials).

Sadly the end of an era in so many ways.

This, the last and probably least, of all big screen versions of situation comedies is made even more unfortunate by being released after the untimely death of Youtha Joyce. It is surely not a way she would have wanted to have been remembered. This follows all the established clichés of other sitcom adaptations: going on holiday, mistaken identity, and the involvement of incompetent organised crime (the main villain is occasionally seen bald and sometimes bewigged, no doubt a homage to Lex Luthor in the contemporaneous Superman film). A whole plethora of bit-part British actors of the period gives a slight pleasure since the viewers can entertain themselves with the "What's his name? I recognise the face. Wasn't he in-?" game. Otherwise this is a painful experience. The script is dreadful even by spin off standards. Everything here is lazy and more importantly, unfunny. Typical scene: A hit-man runs up a flight of stairs to kill George and out of breath, he talks to Mildred about his children, then takes the lift down only to run up again, spots George (by chance) but then not kill him. Its a drawn out and embarrassingly bad sequence and not remotely amusing. In the end, the villains chase George and Mildred in their car. We are told repeatedly they are going down a dead end. However the road (unlike the script) is not a dead end. After the villains have a cheaply shot and unfunny crash, the Ropers end up on an airfield which seems to be created merely so George can elicit the hilarious line "He's flying a bit low."

As with a lot of TV-to-film sitcoms, this failed miserably to transfer to the big screen. The mainly studio settings of the TV version forced some sort of discipline which is sadly lacking here. Seems quite appropriate that this was made by Hammer Films. A classic of the horror genre!

I admit that I came accidentally at this"movie". From my early youth I remembered the actress Yootha Joyce from television. She impressed me because she "was really there". I later learned that she was a "regular drinker ( one bottle of wine a day)". I wandered why she came to this habit. But now seeing, watching this movie you know Wernher she was "trapped in". This movie is not humor nor amusement, it is a complete horror. Probably "producers" like this kind of "toy-play".

I think that they and there toys are better in the "wastepaper-bin".

Enjoy.