Comedy > 1970 Comedy

(noun) - longing for something past...

Advantages: Another chance to see a wildly successful comedy troupe...
Disadvantages: ...and that success might baffle you

...this misheard lyric may constitute the Goodies's most significant contribution to popular culture in the 1990s: an astonishing fall from grace for a comedy combo that were a bedrock of the BBC's light entertainment output in the 1970s. How did this happen? For all the while that Messrs Garden, Oddie and Brooke-Taylor languished as a trace memory for a generation, the BBC were merrily flogging the wares of most of their contemporaries on video, and ...
...as successful. What exactly had the Goodies done to deserve such ostracising? Did they kidnap and eat children as they slept? Were they responsible for Idi Amin's regime in Uganda? Was 'The Funky Gibbon' really that bad? 'Here We Come, Into Town...' The constituent parts of The Goodies fell together at Cambridge University in the mid 1960s: Tim Brooke-Taylor studying law, Graeme Garden studying medicine (hence his occasional utilisation in ...

greenierexyboy 31.05.2008 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: exceptional
Review of The Goodies At Last! (DVD)

More Carry On Madness

Advantages: The great Sid James and Hattie Jaques
Disadvantages: No Barbara Windsor

Carry On Loving exploded onto British cinemas in 1970 and scored one of its biggest success stories in the series. Though variable in quality, Carry On Loving hit contemporary times perfectly in this mildly risque offering and was entering into the more liberal times which was something director, Gerald Thomas and producer, Peter Rogers intended to loosley draw upon. Carry On Loving is now, perharps one of the more dated entries in the series but ...
...factor that had made the Carry On's such a winner in the first place. You know that there are better things out there than this but yet theres something about the cozy little world of the Carry Ons that remains refreshingly amusing and often provides perfect escapism. Carry On Loving is slightly similar in its content to an earlier addition in the series, Carry On Regardless (1959) with a series of sketches, loosley connected to the same initial ...

IanPhillips 01.08.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Carry On Loving (Special Edition) (DVD)

Classic entry in the long-running film series

Advantages: The addition of Frankie Howard in the cast
Disadvantages: Slow in parts

Following the hilarious medical caper Carry On Again Doctor (1969) (one of my own personal favourites in the series) the merry old Carry On gang retreated into another historical theme for what was the last Carry On film of the swinging sixties (which was the decade that the Carry On films were in their prime), Carry On Up The Jungle (1969). The Carry On films were always essentially British so it's actually quite surprising that they enjoyed such ...
...cinemas for nearly three years!!). Carry On Up The Jungle was really no exception and the film predicatbly runs through all of those familiar gags and double entendres that we've all seen and heard probably 1,000 times before in other Carry On films but it's the super-fine performances of the irreplacable Carry On players that ignite Carry On Up The Jungle into such a wonderful film (not to mention spot-on direction from Gerald Thomas aided by the ...

IanPhillips 18.07.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Carry On Up The Jungle (Special Edition) (DVD)

A good, funny conversion

Advantages: Funny, good characters
Disadvantages: No downfall

Catch-22, the book by Joseph Heller, was always going to be difficult to translate to film, partly because of of its lack of a defined plot, and also because it was made up of many small episodes intertwined to give a form of plot. But, it has been done quite well. The book contained so many incidences of official stupidity, but the film has taken the best and most important of these and used them in a way similar to the book, for example the flashback ...
...referred to. The characters in the film are well shown, particularly Milo, who will bomb the squadron for a contract with the Germans. More of the incidents of catch-22s come out in the film. The disappointing thing about it is the lack of a feeling of mood changing. The book brings all the incidents together to form a sad and helpless ending, but in the film there is very little sign that this is happening. But it is quite a comic film that I would ...

CarpeDiem 09.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Catch 22 (DVD)

The Case of the Missing Intermission

Advantages: Sublime film making
Disadvantages: Shorn of 3 complete episodes

...1970, and fifty years to the day since the death of Doctor Watson. His grandson, also a doctor, but of the veterinary kind, arrives from Canada to take charge of a safety deposit box. Locked in the bank vaults for half a century, in accordance with the late Doctor Watson's wishes it is now to be opened. Inside are some personal belongings of the Doctor's best friend and colleague in sleuthing, Sherlock Holmes. Beneath the deerstalker, looking glass, ...
...intended for publication in the Strand Magazine, these tales from the pen of Doctor Watson revisit cases that the great detective would rather have kept quiet. With both a longtime dead, it's time for the world to learn more of Sherlock Holmes. Well, that's how Billy Wilder's masterpiece would have begun had it not run wildly long on its first edit. Originally shot in an episodic format, featuring four of Holmes' less successful cases, it ran to ...

dadmancat 13.09.2003 · Read full review
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Review of The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (DVD)