Fighting Stock

Having discovered the wonderfully silly Aldwych farces, full of hope I sat down to watch this - one of the last in the series. What a disappointment - like so many comedy series, they should have quit when they were ahead.

It's not a bad film, in fact it's amusing enough to keep you watching (which you can't often say about 1930s comedies!) It's just so much worse than this team's earlier pictures: CUCKOO IN THE NEST and TURKEY TIME which were no classics but in their own very, very silly way, were genuinely funny. Like a lot of comedy programmes, as the series went on and on and on, the ideas, the originality and the fun gave way to just making a product to bring in a profit.

Those earlier pictures were filmed versions of their tried and trusted stage plays whereas this one was written specifically for the screen. Missing those years responding directly to audience reactions to hone the laughter levels, makes this feel a little it's simply going through the motions.