Our Miss Fred

Hmmm. Unfortunately, here, Danny La Rue just never convinces at the Shakespearian actor "Fred Wimbush" in the first place and so for me this quickly descends into an hybrid of "La Grande Vadrouille" (1966) and a "Carry On" film - and not a very funny one, either. He and his troupe are out entertaining the troops when they falls into Nazi hands. Thinking "Fred" is a woman, they let her go - only for her to focus her efforts on rescuing her squad and making it to safety. The stereotypes run rampant here - the stiff upper lip (and pretty brainless) airmen exemplified by Lance Percival's "Smallpiece" and Alfred Marks' incompetent "Gen Brincker" hardly portrays the enemy as a dangerous and lethal foe, either. Of course it's a comedy and there isn't meant to be any menace, but the joke recycles itself and the direction smacks more of a Norman Wisdom film - only without the fun. That said - it is not tacky or bawdy, La Rue takes a professional approach to this performance and had the writing delivered him a better, less puerile, script then it might have been more entertaining. It isn't really fair to judge this fifty years on - tastes have evolved and changed, and this is all now relatively old hat compared to what was being made at the time, but I still struggled with the concept. Watch and see for yourself...