Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

Beautiful, moving film.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Blistering performances.

Young Bill (John Mills) has just joined the British Army, as he wants to do his part now that war has arrived. Well, Old Bill (Morland Graham), his father, wants to do his part as well...though no one takes him seriously due to his age. Plus, he already fought in WWI like a good patriotic Brit would have done. At first he's rejected but ultimately joins up...and ends up serving with his son.It is hard to believe that a many pushing 50 would be inducted into the regular army, though the Home Guard (volunteers who drilled and trained in case the country was actually invaded) would have loved to have had Old Bill. Regardless, you should suspend your disbelief and just watch this pleasant comedy. Not a great film by any standard but a nice propaganda film made to stir up British pride and patriotism when things were their worst.

Bruce Bairnsfather sends his old campaigner out looking for a better 'ole for the Second World War in this movie, under the direction of Ian Dalyrimple. After John Mills, playing Young Bill, joins up when war is declared, Old Bill, played by Morland Graham tries to get in. He's told he's too old, but a series of senior officers were his junior officers in the last fight, so he winds up on the front in France, scrounging and getting into trouble in this service comedy.This was a good effort at the time it was released -- in March of 1940, when the fighting, so far as the British were concerned, was on the Eastern Front, and a failed campaign in Norway. The French were still waiting in the Maginot Line, facing the Siegfried Line. It would take another couple of months before the Germans launched their blitzkrieg, took Belgium and the real war began, so far as British history was concerned, at Dunkirk.As a result this looks like a very peculiar view of the Second World War, like Jan de Hartog's ERGENS IN NEDERLAND. Like many a movie made for the moment, its moment has passed.

Unlike the other "reviewer" i have had the opportunity of seeing this film.It is of course based on the cartoon characters of Bruce Bairnsfather of Tommie's in the First World War.There was a Warner Brothers silent film "The Better Ole" produced by Warner Brothers in 1926.This film updates the story to the Phony War period of the Second World War.Bill is now serving in The Pioneer Corps close to where his son,played by John Mills,is stationed.The humour ,such as it is is rather predictable,stealing chickens etc and is rather laboured.It is rather surprising that this film is dated 1941 as it has the feeling of a film produced before the blitzkreig of the low countries.John Mills,is rightly quite dismissive of this film in his autobiography.It is really no more than a curiosity now.

A film that once did its bit in cheering up a Britain at war, it is unlikely to have them rolling in the aisles at the multiplex. This is not to say that it couldn't still raise a few laughs, if it was ever shown again.From what I have read of the contemporary novelisation, and seen of the 12 production stills included in that volume - which appears to be a very faithful adaptation - , it is a jolly effort all round, and might well appeal to anyone who enjoys 'Dad's Army'. Perhaps a television audience would appreciate its quaint charms.Certainly, it is redolent of its era. Old Bill reminds one of an elderly if slightly dotty relative, whom we should be more sorry than we are to see shuffle off into oblivion. I would go so far as to say that we would be altogether nicer and more interesting people if we made the past generations more welcome at our flickering electronic hearth. But I suppose someone over fifty would be prone to such opinions. The under-forties probably find such ordinary old films too creepily remote from the common light of current fashion for comfortable viewing. There is, truly, nothing more disturbing than being forced to observe the precursors of your own flimsy wisps of existence in that dusty shaft of relentless ephemerality! But for all those out there who habitually prowl the graveyards of long-forgotten tears and laughter, illuminated by the unnatural light of other days, you might try second-hand booksellers for the next-best thing to seeing the film itself:Old Bill & son : the story of the film /by Bruce Bairnsfather and Ian Dalrymple. - London : Hutchinson & Co., [1941]