What the hell happened here? The ground-breaking and brilliant scripted sitcom, which was made into the good quality 1969 first spin-off film, is now kicked "'til death'" by this super-cheap and contradictory offering. The main problem, aside of the tacky look and poor plot structure, is the fact that the offensive elements seem to be lacking the irony that made them so effective before.
In the series and first film, Alf Garnet would say some appalling and cringe-inducing racist, classist and sexist things - using these to support a world view which was often ridiculous. Juxtaposition would be provided by the 'Scouse git' Mike, Rita, and to a degree Else Garnet. Their more liberal views would expose Alf for what he was. Here, the characters of Mike and Rita are not just recast with vastly inferior actors: their characters are changed as well. Rita simply has none of her wit, and is a shallow ineffectual figure. Mike is a benefits scrounging, promiscuous drug taker. He runs about leering at girls with a mate played by someone I think was in the 'Confessions' films. Later he uses the very horrendous racist slurs that Alf does. Him being a benefits scrounger waving wads of money around at drug dealers and 'loose' women is playing into the ideas right wing tabloids would have us believe. Alf would likely, and probably has, ranted about such things in the past - and been seen to be misguided. So this, combined with Mike's overt sexism and frequent use of the C-word (the other one), means he is no longer the comic foil. The series was all about those two facing each other off - often literally. Without an effective opponent for Alf, this film is largely rendered an offence fest without much to balance it out. Political discussions are also not so commonplace - slapstick, buffoonery and 70s exploitation taking precedence.
I can see it would have been interesting for Mike to find some racist tendencies in himself when faced with Rita's apparent affair with a rich black man - it would be out of character, but with the right treatment could be posing some intriguing questions about the nature of prejudice. Similarly, if the affair was more plausible (some chemistry between them - some idea who the guy is) that story element could work. But it isn't, and it doesn't. The film seems to realise about this, and gets bored, just letting the whole thing fizzle away. New obnoxious-model Mike is simply forgiven after cheating on Rita, and they run off to bed. Great. That showed him then. Then Alf accidentally takes LSD with 'hilarious' consequences - I've never dropped acid, but I shouldn't think it's like that. Then he sets the bed on fire, gets sprayed by an extinguisher and the film ends. It's all just a sloppy rush job. There seems to be no point in the subplot with the couple played by John Le Mesurier and Nursie from 'Blackadder'. There are some iffy celebrity cameos, not least from George Best ,and the geography of London is twisted out of all recognition. And that's just a handful of observations.
Why the writer Johnny Speight or Warren Mitchell let this become so shoddy, or the great John Le Mesurier agreed to be in it, is beyond me. Speight and Mitchell did arguably make mistakes in doing the two sequel series, which went on beyond the death (Dandy Nichols) and departures of key actors - and the Garnet character was still in use in the 90s for goodness sake! So I suppose they were dining out on their very popular creation. But this film takes the biscuit: disturbingly it was made before the original series ended - very early on. To be fair, Mitchell - who sadly died this year - is still at his manic best here, except for the woeful acid scene. And Dandy Nichols is reliably decent as Else. But the whole rotten structure around them sabotages that: it's simply a pale incarnation of TDUDP, which seems to have been rightly forgotten.
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