Such a frustrating disappointment

hyped garbage

Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely Fantastic

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.

If you're a fan of the BBC series, this movie is worth watching just as a curiosity – it's fun to see these much-beloved characters on holiday and up to their usual shenanigans – but honestly, there's not much artistic value in it as a stand-alone work, and if you weren't familiar with the characters, it wouldn't make much sense. The sets are low-budget, the special effects laughable, and, as noted previously, much of the dialog is lifted directly and without revision from various episodes. It seems to me that someone was just attempting to cash in on the popularity of the series without putting much effort or financing into it. Given the talent of the cast and the creative synergy that they shared, it could've been much more than it is.As a fan of "Fawlty Towers" as well, I have to say that Andrew Sachs is a delight as Don Carlos Bernardo – fancy Manuel finally running his own hotel!

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".