Comwayon
A Disappointing Continuation
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Stephanie
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
amyghost
but there are some very funny bits in this: Rik Mayall's manic SAS agent, Ian Richardson's Rear Admiral Bendish (you may need some familiarity with British slang to get the joke, but it's made clear soon enough), the incomparable Peter Cook's crazed Prime Minister and several other performances lend this sometimes fairly juvenile outing a good deal more comedic mileage than it probably would have gotten from a less talented cast. The ending does come close to ranking up there as a bit of a classic, and overall it's a pretty entertaining piece of silliness. It's not going to knock 'Dr. Strangelove' off of any pedestals for stinging anti-war satire, but it does supply some genuine laughs.Michael Richards' portrayal of Lacrobat can't come close to John Cleese's handling of the role in the 1982 television series, but he gets some amusing business in; and the somewhat oddly cast Loretta Swit does a better job with her role as President Adams than might have been expected.
Tweekums
I bought this film on VHS in the late eighties and thought it was hilarious; after many years I thought I'd see if I'd still enjoyed it... I did! The film opens with the fascist Central American Republic of Maguadora invading a small British colony in the Caribbean; a task force is deployed and the colony is retaken. That isn't the end of the matter though; the Maguadorans employ the world famous terrorist Lacrobat to kidnap Princess Wendy and threaten to kill her if Britain doesn't had the colony to Maguadora. Once she has been kidnapped it is a race to find her before she is killed; an act that Prime Minister Sir Mortimer Chris says will be met by swift nuclear retaliation! If that wasn't bad enough it is learnt that the Soviet Union has its own secret missile base in the Caribbean which they promise to use if Maguadora is attacked.I found this film as hilarious as I did when I first watched it; sure some jokes don't work as well as others but they come thick and fast so if you don't laugh at one joke another is coming very soon. The main plot is clearly inspired by the 1982 war to liberate the Falkland Islands after the Argentinean invasion and there are other sections inspired by real events such as the SAS storming of the Iranian Embassy and even the Cuban Missile Crisis. Funny moments are too many to list but highlights include solving unemployment by getting people in work to jump to their deaths off Beachy Head, the public crucifixion of cabinet ministers and best of all the storming of a wax museum by a squad of overly enthusiastic, dim-witted SAS soldiers. The cast includes a fine array of acting talent including Peter Cook, Ian Richardson, Loretta Swit, Rik Mayell, Herbert Lom and Alexi Sayle; some like Mayell are hilariously over the top but most play their parts straight which given the material makes it even funnier. While I expect most people will find this amusing it isn't really suitable for younger viewers or the easily offended as it includes such things as an accidental castration, a travelling sex toy salesman and a pile of severed heads!
revtg1-2
Name a genre of political or social satire. It is in this movie. Name a sacred cow that needs to be kicked in the udders. A swift kick is delivered in this movie. Here's a sample. Loretta Swit is selected as vice president of the US because it is "PC". His first day in office the president dies. Our first female president is faced with some serious foreign policy decisions and decides to seek the advice of the former president, Murray Hamilton. You get the first hint of outrageous satire when her limo arrives at the gates of a federal prison. Hamilton portrays a hilarious amalgamation of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in an understated performance that borders on genius. He takes a break from busting rocks and advises Swit with a lot of film-flam and jibber-jabber, then embraces the two Secret Services agents. They walk back to the limo talking about how the former president is the salt of the earth. When they turn around you see he has stolen the shirts off their backs while leaving their neckties and suit coats in place. After that the outrageous satire comes rapid fire in every scene. After every scene you think, "They can't upstage that." Then they do. In spades and doubled. It doesn't end until the end of the movie. See it with some friends. Laugh out loud.
Penfold-13
There's a genre of spy thriller which involves Presidents, Prime Ministers and other heads of government, top police and spymasters, an assassin like Carlos the Jackal, and the imminent outbreak of WWIII. Whoops Apocalypse is one of those.Just as Airplane is a disaster movie.Not that Whoops Apocalypse is as funny as Airplane - there are too many scenes when the plot advances in a reasonably pointful fashion for that - but there are some inspired spoof scenes. There's a beautiful one when the Navy Officer gets his orders to report to his ship by nightfall - there are reasons why this isn't quite as poignant as the similar scenes in b&w 1942 movies.Some bits of it may well seem inexplicable unless you remember that it was made in Britain in 1986, with the Falklands War still fairly fresh in people's minds, Di-mania a-booming, and Margaret Thatcher still running the country in demented fashion.The highlight of the film is Peter Cook's portrayal of Prime Minister Sir Mortimer Chris: a high-powered Sir Bufton Tufton, fearfully right-wing and, as we discover, stark staring bonkers. Loretta Swit plays the US President a la Carol Channing, and a number of others kick in with decent cameos.I'd like to see it again, to find out whether I got all the jokes the first time round - Airplane must have taken a dozen viewings before I'd spotted some of the really subtle touches. I suspect there is less to discover in this second and third time round, but it's not a bad attempt, overall.
