The conceit: Winston Churchill was actually an American action hero and Adolf Hitler was about to marry then-Princess Elizabeth (against her will, of course; she was still alive when this was made and the filmmakers didn't want to wind up in the Tower).
Good: Anthony Sher has some delightful moments as Hitler.
Good: Neve Campbell is a (too) lovely, gung-ho Elizabeth.
Good: This movie has a few good laughs. Such as the pilot who flew Hitler into England. Hey, I laughed out loud at the clutch incident; and, having seen too many World War II movies, I enjoyed what they did with the table where they moved ships and things around (I'm no expert on the period: did such tables actually exist? And why?)
Good: Miranda Richardson made an intriguing, entertaining Eva and as for the portrait of Princess Margaret . . . What satire? And I loved the dog.
Otherwise, this flick amounts to "Carry On, Adolf and Eva." All it lacks are the nasal intonations of Kenneth Wiliams and the whisky-barrel laughs of Sid James.
Except that Williams and James had more genuine talent than most of those assembled here beneath the top tier of actors.
It's difficult to describe the good parts without giving away the few laughs in this one-note affair, which amounts to a sketch (or perhaps no more than a howlingly funny Kentucky Fried Theater trailer/commercial) stretched out like chewing gum to movie length . . . Well, the version I saw was, mercifully, lasted little more than an hour and a quarter and I thought I'd have to gnaw my own leg off to free myself.
Personal digression: though I was a poor boy in a small southern American town I grew up in the 1970s on a diet of P. G Wodehouse and Monty Python and the Goodies and Peter Sellers. Later on life, thanks to the Internet, I enjoyed the Goon Show, Hancock's Half Hour, I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and The Burkiss Way. I bought a region-free DVD player solely to watch little English movies starring Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, George Cole, Alistair Sim, Eric Barker and the self-same Leslie Phillips who makes a total, irredeemable (donkey) of himself in this . . . (to quote Adolf) . . . Thing.
British readers will know what I'm talking about: as with American comedy, I only care for the cream of British humor and, while I've endured worse, this is fairly close to the dregs. It starts out funny (enough) but quickly peters out. Here and there the humor shines, but most of it just is.
At rock bottom, all failed comedy may be traced to the same root cause: the writing. This movie has a roster of writers who should have known better. Perhaps, as a writer myself (I won't divulge under what name), I have too much imagination but I can see them in a little room as on "The Dick van Dyke Show" (and I bring up van Dyke for a reason, but I can't say why) snickering to themselves like schoolboys who scrawl dirty words on walls. They've forgotten the cardinal rule of writing: "good enough" isn't good enough. Especially where comedy is concerned. They should've rewritten it again and again.
And again.
If all else failed, they might've added more dogs.
