“The whole idea of the film was excellent”; “The story was laced with excellent set jokes and well placed one liners”; “If you are British, have a basic knowledge of WW2 and a British sense of humour, you will love it”; “8 out of 10”; “You will laugh, and you’ll have a good time”.
“Possibly one of the worst films ever made”; “Completely stupid film!”; “Awful directing, awful script, poor acting”; “This is a steaming pile of utter dung”; “I watched the first half hour of this film and hated every minute of it”; “Christian Slater you should hang your head in shame!”
What kind of movie could bring our such extreme positive and negative reactions?
One clue is that the first comments were from British viewers and the negative second tranche from our American cousins.
The film in question is 2004’s Churchill: The Hollywood Years and we’re recognising it in the Torbay Weekly as the movie locations included: Oldway Mansion as Buckingham Palace; Cockington; Powderham Castle; Buckfastleigh as Frothington on the Waddle train station; Kingswear as Buckingham Palace railway station; and Brixham as Plymouth Docks.
This was a British comedy featuring extremely well-known actors from across the Atlantic. And that was part of the problem.
The lead was American Christian Slater who had his breakout role as JD in the satire Heathers (1989). He followed this up with Young Guns II (1990), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), True Romance (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Broken Arrow (1996), Hard Rain (1998) and Windtalkers (2002).
Costarring was Canadian Neve Campbell emerged as a scream queen in the 1990s as Sidney Prescott in Scream (1996), which spawned the Scream franchise.
Bizarrely, Christian Slater takes on the role of Winston Churchill while Neve was the future Elizabeth II in a parody of Hollywood distortions of history. Specific inspirations for the spoof were the unhistorical blockbuster movies U-571, where the capture of an Enigma machine was by the Americans rather than the British, and Pearl Harbor, where American participation in the Battle of Britain was grossly exaggerated.
Here’s the storyline. American executives making a film about World War II decide that their lead needs to be more glamorous, so they draft in an American GI to play the part of Winston Churchill. Their take on the war depicts a handsome Churchill falling in love with Princess Elizabeth, who is herself involved in the war as an undercover agent.
This is a clearly satire and we only have to look at the director and the cast to see what sort of film we are getting.
Director, screenwriter, actor and comedian Peter Richardson co-wrote the screenplay with Pete Richens. Peter founded the Comic Strip troupe of performers, and boosted the careers of pioneers in the British alternative comedy scene such as French and Saunders, Nigel Planer, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, and Alexei Sayle.
In the 1980s Peter approached Channel 4 to make a series of short, self-contained one-off comedy films which led to The Comic Strip Presents…, the majority of which featured him acting, writing and directing. Peter developed the series into feature films, The Supergrass, Eat the Rich, The Pope Must Die, and, of course, Churchill: The Hollywood Years. None achieved great box office success.
Then there is the cast. Christian Slater in the lead role and gives a good performance. He gets the joke and takes a leaf from Charlie Sheen and the Hot Shots movie. Neve Campbell’s performance as Elizabeth is also good with her overdone oh-so British accent.
Behind the main actors we have a panoply of British comedy talent: Harry Enfield as King George VI; Rik Mayall as Baxter; Jon Culshaw as Tony Blair; David Schneider as Joseph Goebbels; Phil Cornwell as Martin Bormann (with an east-end accent); Leslie Phillips as Lord W’ruff; James Dreyfus as Teasy-Weasy; Bob Mortimer; Vic Reeves; Sally Phillips; and Steve Pemberton.
Anthony Sher is a good comedy Hitler while the terrific Miranda Richardson makes an intriguing Eva Braun. One viewer suggested the movie should have been retitled ‘Carry On, Adolf and Eva’ making it crystal clear to everyone the kind of comedy tradition the movie was coming from.
The jokes are plentiful; many are sight gags and some work while others don’t. But this is more than a wacky slapstick comedy that gets its laughs from making prominent historical figures look ridiculous. This is the Peter Richardson of ‘The Strike’ or ‘GLC’ and the film is wittier than it first appears, with historical and movie references aplenty.
For example, Mackenzie Crook as ‘Irish Cockney’ Jim Jim Charoo takes his name from a song Dick van Dyke sings in Mary Poppins; he lives on Ye Olde Dick Van Dyke Street. The Irish Cockneys reference the steerage passengers in that other blockbuster Titanic. The scene between Charoo and the waitress in a station tearoom are parodies of scenes from Brief Encounter.
Another allusion is when a taxi driver and the King mistake Adolf Hitler for Charlie Chaplin, who played a spoof of Hitler in the satirical film The Great Dictator.
The ‘Siegfried Line’ rap is based on the wartime song ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’ with an introduction referencing Top Gun.
At the end of the movie, Churchill’s final exit in a Spitfire is a comment on that spurious American contribution to winning the Battle of Britain in the film Pearl Harbor.
The professional critics, somewhat predicably, were dismissive. “The humour is largely underpant-based and of the all-mincing, all-flouncing gay stereotype variety, which looks like a barefaced insult to the audience” (The Times); “A hit and miss affair” (The Observer); “Sadly, Peter Richardson suffers the fate of many satirists; in trying to mock bad movies, he’s simply made a bad movie” (the BBC). On the other hand, The Guardian conceded, “It’s wildly uneven and very broad, but there are some laughs”.
Perhaps to appreciate Churchill: The Hollywood Years you really do need to have at least been familiar with the Comic Strip. It may well be that the movie would have been better served if it could have remained a TV movie rather than a film. Indeed, the involvement of Christian Slater and Neve Campbell is perhaps its greatest weakness as it exposed the movie to an American audience who inevitably would not get the joke. It subsequently suffered by being judged as something it was never intended to be.
Churchill: The Hollywood Years is clearly a British Film. The whole look of the film is British. It comes from a British tradition. A large proportion of the cast were British. This is clearly a parody, meticulously going through the motions of generic action movie plot lines and showing how ridiculous their predetermined plot arches are.
It is supposed to be over-the-top and silly. This is British humour; innuendo, satire, absurdity, eccentricity, sarcasm, practical jokes, and affectionate stereotypes.
Even its obvious low budget can be seen as part of the joke. It imitates and exaggerates the style of the well-known summer blockbuster genre and is an effective antidote to the Michael Bay-style action movies such as Pearl Harbour or Armageddon.
Do give Churchill: The Hollywood Years a chance. The absurdity of the movie is the point. The premise is ridiculous and for a reason. It is not a history lesson. And as long as you’re not expecting sophisticated comedy or subtlety of any kind, you may well have fun.
‘Torquay: A Social History’ by local author Kevin Dixon is available for £10 from Artizan Gallery, Fleet Street, Torquay. or:
https://www.art-hub.co.uk/product-page/torquay-a-social-history-by-kevin-dixon
