6 replies to this topic

[Monteverdi]

Were you one of the 70 or so people who saw this film on its opening weekend? Whatever merits the play has, who in their right mind thought it would make a film today. The trick of the play may work on stage, and it did, but a film is a very different beast. Of all the limited finance available for films these days, why, oy why, did this recieve a penny. Even on paper it could not have seemed a good idea. Never has a film been quite so derided.......
as someone who works in film and theatre, t is sad to see so much effort wasted, unnecessarily.

[Honoured Guest]

Starring Judi Dench (aka M in Skyfall: Last of the Summer Bond) and Richard Briers (old trouper, deceased).

[armadillo]

Starring more or less everyone who was on telly in the 1980s - Bernard Cribbens, Frank Thornton, Jenny Seagrove, Dennis Waterman, Sylvia Sims, Timothy West, Andrew Sachs, Lionel Blair, June Whitfield, Christopher Biggins, Simon Williams, Derek Fowlds,  Derek Griffiths, Su Pollard, Barry Cryer, Tony Britton , Robin Asquith, Uncle Rolf Harris and all. Unfortunately they chose to put Danny Dyer on the poster ... Shame this got zero distribution (a few cinemas showed it for one day only) as I imagine quite a few people are curious to see it. Or is it just me?

[armadillo]

I'd still like to see it - I doubt many current film critics are partcular fans of stage farce or indeed bygone sitcoms so they may not be the best judges here. It's a shame when a lot of work goes into a product (however misguidededly) and then it vanishes without trace. Not uncommon with British films though - I sometimes see a whole column of film titles I don't recognise in people's programme credits and they  can't *all* be short films.

[wickedgrin]

Farce only works on stage with a live audience and does not translate to film. This fact coupled with the fact that farce has gone out of fashion. From the 50's - 80's with the Brian Rix Whitehall farces such as Reluctant Heroes, Dry Rot to the Ray Cooney farces such as Move Over Mrs Markham and Not Now Darling as well as the long run of No Sex Please We're British etc the WE was never without several long running farces. But today the genre has largly gone out of fashion. So to make a film of a farce in todays market was folly.

[armadillo]

wickedgrin, on 23 February 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

Farce only works on stage with a live audience and does not translate to film. This fact coupled with the fact that farce has gone out of fashion. From the 50's - 80's with the Brian Rix Whitehall farces such as Reluctant Heroes, Dry Rot to the Ray Cooney farces such as Move Over Mrs Markham and Not Now Darling as well as the long run of No Sex Please We're British etc the WE was never without several long running farces. But today the genre has largly gone out of fashion. So to make a film of a farce in todays market was folly.

  Has it gone out of fashion? Noises Off, One Man Two Guvnors, See How They Run, A Flea in Her Ear etc etc have all done rather well recently. There haven't been any new ones but then how many successful new WE plays have there been in any genre recently? (I don't count transfers from the subsidised sector). Hard to do a two-hander farce.

[xanderl]

Not that I would imply this is why Run For Your Wife was made but ...

http://m.guardian.co...ad-british-film

Obviously, there are exceptions. But for every rare Britflick success, there must be 20 sensationally appalling duds. In a country so strong in all the other arts, it was one of the great mysteries of the modern cultural era. So what a lightbulb moment to read that, according to the Times, £150,000 invested in a film could generate £1m of tax relief – even if it flopped