UK, 1977 Director: Bob Kellett
Stars: John Inman, Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton
Grace Bros. department store is closed for renovations, and the entire staff are sent on holiday together. Our beloved crew arrive in the fictional Moroccan resort of Costa Plonka, where mix-ups and double entendre are the order of the day, and a half-baked civil war waits for the third act.
That’s pretty much the entire story of this feature-length episode of the British TV favorite. One familiar, some might say stale, skit follows the next, with the hapless staff checking in to an overbooked hotel and having to bunk in teepees out the back, Mr Humphries being mistaken for Mrs Slocombe and being chased around the yard in a wig by a horny admirer, and so on. Mrs Slocombe frets continuously about her pussy, and her interest in Captain Peacock is suggested by the emphasis she always puts on the pronunciation of the second syllable of his last name. Captain Peacock wants to get into Miss Brahms’ pants, and so does Mr Lucas. Endless sex jokes and basic slapstick punchlines flow thick and fast. So in other words, if you liked Are You Being Served on television, you’ll probably enjoy the movie, released at the height of the show’s success.
Trouble is, the whole thing is very dated and watching this movie today is a bit like going to a television museum. "Fawlty Towers" got its laughs from its officious but endearingly desperate main character, so it holds up today, and is just as funny as ever. "Are You Being Served" got its laughs from Seventies British middle-class sexual humour, giggles over the naughty things that just weren’t supposed to be spoken about, and so it doesn’t really work anymore for audiences who’ve grown up hearing about gay male anal sex and tell-tale marks on Michael Jackson’s penis on the nightly news.
However, I’d been drinking all day when a friend pulled the DVD of this film off the shelf, and I had a ball. We kept telling each other how stupid it was, but had to replay a couple of scenes because we’d been laughing too hard to hear them. Somehow, once you hit a certain blood alcohol level, you tune into the wavelength of this dated, silly humour. Every time Mr Humphries (John Inman) clacked into view in yet another ridiculous outfit, we fell apart. Miss Brahms cheese-grater voice and saucy put-aways also brought the house down.
The suggestive carnality of the tv show has been ratcheted up a level in the film, with Mr Humphries a most voracious homo and the horny yearnings of all the ensemble very much on display. The absence of the laugh track is something else that takes a bit of getting used to. Oh, and speaking of "Fawlty Towers", look for Andrew Sachs, that show’s long-suffering butler Manuel, as an efficient Costa Plonka hotel concierge.
