This big-screen outing for the TV sitcom favourite may be flimsy, but the cast could hardly be better
This big-screen outing for the TV sitcom favourite may be flimsy, but the cast could hardly be better.
Toby Jones is a touching mix of pomposity and decency as Captain Mainwaring, Bill Nighy brings his familiar suavity to debonair Sergeant Wilson, Michael Gambon is a joy as the gentle, doddery Private Godfrey, Tom Courteney is ideal as the excitable Jones while Bill Paterson, Daniel Mays and Blake Harrison prove excellent fits for Privates Fraser, Walker and Pike.
The plot, which finds Walmington-on-Sea's Home Guard sent into a tizzy by news of a Nazi spy in their midst and by the arrival of Catherine Zeta-Jones' glamorous reporter, creaks as much as Jones' delivery van, but it gets everyone from A to B intact.
A modest accomplishment, perhaps, but not to be sneered at and somehow fitting for a celebration of the British art of muddling through.
