Blake Harrison

The beloved 1970s British sit-com gets the big screen treatment, although there's been very little attempt to do anything clever with it aside from A-list casting. There are some terrific gags in Hamish McColl's script, but director Oliver Parker (Johnny English Reborn) fails to find the comical potential in the material. So the film feels clumsy and muted, which is certainly not going to attract a new generation of fans to the premise.

It's 1944 in the small village of Walmington on the southern English coast, where the men who were unfit to serve in the regular army have volunteered for the Home Guard when they're not working their normal jobs. The platoon's captain is bank manager Mainwaring (Toby Jones), who leads a ragtag group of retirees (Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon and Bill Paterson) and younger army rejects (Daniel Mays and Blake Harrison) through a series of exercises along the seaside cliffs. They've been tipped off that there's a Nazi spy in the area, but they're all so smitten by the curvy visiting journalist Rose (Catherine Zeta-Jones) that they fail to notice that she's up to something nefarious.

The material is ripe for political-edged comedy, which the script touches on in between the relentless double entendre. And the cast is definitely up for it, delivering solid performances that bring out character details while playing up the goofy interaction between them. But Parker leaves them looking adrift on-screen, never cranking up either a sense of pace or a spark of life. Each set-piece falls utterly flat, starting with the movie's opening scene in which the gang is chased around afield by a supposedly angry bull. And everything that follows feels half-hearted, which means that the Carry On-style innuendo, physical slapstick and nutty action all fall flat.

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Fans of the TV series and 2011 first movie probably won't mind that the filmmakers never bother to develop these characters at all. At least the four lead actors have plenty of charm to paper over the thinly written script, making the most of even the most simpleminded gags while playing up the traits that have kept fans coming back since the TV show debuted in 2008. The actors are now between 27 and 30, but the idiots they play are resolutely stuck in their teens.

Having finally survived high school, Jay (James Buckley) takes a gap year in Australia while his pal Will (Simon Bird) has a lonely first year at university. Even a visit from pals Simon and Neil (Joe Thomas and Blake Harrison) fails to cheer Will up, but a suggestion that they drain their student loans and head Down Under to visit Jay is more like it. Jay has painted a picture of sex-crazed party mayhem, but when they land in Sydney the reality is somewhat different. So when hot babe Katie (Emily Berrington) invites Will to come to Byron Bay with her gang of middle-class hippies, he drags his mates along. But these four guys fail to fit into the backpacking lifestyle, and instead head to the Outback to find Jay's ex.

The film opens in a nicely cinematic style, with slick spoofs of both Harry Potter and Scarface before settling into the usual groove: setting up each sequence as a possibility for sex before everything unravels into humiliating chaos. The problem is that this repetitive cycle is all set-up but almost never any pay-off. A waterslide sequence is a hilarious exception, building a queasy sense of suspense before landing a series of riotously revolting punchlines. But more often the characters are left staring into space before muttering, "OK then," before the screen fades to black as if it's time for an ad break.

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Sleek and tightly constructed, this low-key British horror thriller worms its way under the skin to put us in what feels like an impossible situation. We may not be able to identify with everything the central character does, or each decision she makes, but we squirm at the thought of being in her shoes. And by keeping everything so understated and suggestive, filmmaker Steve Reeves manages to deliver several terrific jolts.

In London, corporate executive Charlotte (Maxine Peake) is having a seriously terrible day. After giving up her personal life for her job, she's bypassed for a big promotion that goes instead to Tom (Sam Hoare), whose wife (Tori Hart) has just had the baby Charlotte has always longed for. After drowning her frustration in alcohol, she goes home to find her surly cleaner Maya (Elisa Lasowski) smoking in her flat and trying to steal a bottle of champagne. But their confrontation takes a dark turn when Charlotte accidentally kills Maya. In a panic, she hides the body. But this only begins a series of major decisions Charlotte must make. She reaches out to her sister Sarah (Christine Bottomley) for help, but things begin to feel a lot more precarious when the smiley Roger (Blake Harrison) turns up.

The title refers to one of Charlotte's most important choices, which is something better discovered in the context of the story. Indeed, the entire movie seems to exist behind Peake's expressive eyes and stony face. She gives Charlotte an uncanny inner life, thinking through the ramifications of every startling twist as if it was part of a major corporate project. It's easy to see why she is so good at her job, although her intelligence also makes some of what she does feel rather contrived. But Peake's considerable screen presence makes it clear that Charlotte is the kind of woman who doesn't accept help from anyone and would rather do even the dirtiest work herself.

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