Are You Being Served? The Movie (1977)

ARE YOU BEING SERVED? is a 1977 big screen outing for the popular British TV sitcom of the same name. All of the same cast are back in a plot that sees the workers being packaged off for an ill-fated holiday on the 'Costa Plonka'. There's something endearingly low budget about the production which was entirely shot in a studio in Britain aside from one brief airport scene.The film isn't as funny as the TV series and it's a bit odd not to have any canned laughter, but I found myself enjoying it regardless. The humour is more along the lines of CARRY ON ABROAD than anything else but the actors are all very good at line delivery and the likes of John Inman and Mollie Sugden rarely step out of line. The film is fairly smutty in places but not offensively so as in these modern times. Much of the humour relies on puns which for the most part are very amusing, and there's a bonus in having FAWLTY TOWERS star Andrew Sachs playing another Spaniard.

When I heard they made a movie from Are You Being Served, I was more than intrigued to check it out. Sadly, it lacked the hilarity of the TV series. Many of the lines in the movie were taken from various episodes of the series and just weren't as funny without the audience laughter. I liked that the original cast was all in it but seeing this movie just once was enough for me. I think the only BritCom that can pull off making movies and have them be just as funny as the series is Monty Python. I believe if Keeping Up Appearances or Allo Allo tried to make a movie, it would be just as much of a disaster as the Are You Being Served movie. If you're a die-hard fan of Are You Being Served, don't waste your time seeing the movie. You'll be disappointed.

OK, it's creaky, incredibly dated, and the sets (or was there just one set?!) are wobbly, but that's all part of the charm. It's also quite perceptive of the attitude of the British abroad, that still persists to this day. My friends and I always seem to end up quoting from this film when we go abroad!The best scene has to be when the myopic Ernest Grainger, who's never been on a plane before, enters what he thinks is the lavatory (it's actually the cockpit). 'Oh, I'm sorry - will you be long?' he says to the pilot. 'About two hours' replies the pilot. 'Oh dear- I'll go to the other end' replies Mr Grainger. Absolutely priceless!

Ignore the gargantuan ballot-stuffing--median 10.0 indeed!For fans of the tv show this is somewhat amusing, but as a movie it's just shamefully inadequate. In terms of pedigree, this is truly the progenitor of all those later scenarios where five-minute SNL skits had to come out as full-length movies. In the 1990's this would have gone direct-to-video.The regular cast all play as well as ever, but a surprising guest turn is Andrew Sachs who appears as the hotel manager... an amusing irony given his lasting fame as hotel lackey Manuel in "Fawlty Towers".