Having just seen this, and being old enough to remember the original series, it was, as expected, not terribly good. One of the things that makes the original series so good, the interplay between the cool and elegant Sergeant Wilson, and the pompous Captain Mainwaring. In the real world war two, the original Sergeant Wilson, John Le Mesurier, had been a tank regiment Captain, and the original Captain Mainwaring, Arthur Lowe, had been a ranker, a radar technician, and the role-reversal in the series worked so well..... the little class nuances between the two are completely lost in the film, . Michael Gambon carries off Godfrey to a tee, but the rest of the cast just don't seem to get it. Where was Frazer's gloom and doom? Jonesy a cook in the Sudan? have the producers not seen the 'dirty fakir' episode? Hodges barely gets a look in, no verger, and the vicar appears to have turned straight....there are so many little things in the original series that make it so funny, all those little things are missing here, along with the utterly spot on comic timing of the original time-served cast.
Some of the script writing is dire, with no attempt made to get it historically right, the Godfrey sisters to miss Winters, 'where will you be next, New York, Paris... difficult given that Paris was under German occupation at the time... and a U boat surfacing in broad daylight in the bay? Tank traps on the beach at the bottom of a cliff, but no wire or mines? , wire and mines would have put Corporal Jones right in his comedic element!
And as others have observed, Mrs Mainwaring is an original 'er indoors, never actually seen in the series,It was one of the elements of the original that Mainwaring would do absolutely anything to avoid his wife, why change this?
The biggest problem I had watching it though, was that I kept hearing the lines coming out of the on-screen actors, but in my head I was hearing them coming out of the mouths of the original cast,and it just can't live up to it, it's like a huge shadow cast over the whole film, somewhat akin to the relationship between the TV Sweeney, and the dreadful Nick Love film..timing is everything!
