Run for Your Wife

2012 turned out to be something of a banner year for terrible comedies, with the all-star embarrassment Movie 43 opening to a chorus of disapproval and howls of "worst comedy ever" - only for those very same easily-offended critics to eat their words a matter of weeks later when this ill-advised big-screen version of Ray Cooney's redoubtable stage farce opened, very briefly in a handful of cinemas, before distributors pulled the plug. The word was out - Run For Your Wife set a new benchmark in terms of gob-smacking wretchedness. It was Sex Lives of the Potato Men all over again, the benighted British film industry apparently having failed to learn the valuable lessons of the vile Viz spin-off Fat Slags (2004) or the barrel-scraping Bottom spin-off Guest House Paradiso.

There's no denying that Run For Your Wife is indeed awful, but does it really deserve the vitriol that was spewed all over it, causing it to disintegrate like one of Seth Brundle's doughnuts in the Fly (1986)? Well, Danny Dyer - now safely ensconced in EastEnders, but at the time negotiating a tricky image change after the public and critics alike decided they'd had quite enough of him playing a foul-mouthed Cockney geezer - didn't do too badly in the pivotal role of John Smith, a bigamist taxi driver trying to juggle two marriages. Ray Cooney's enduring and endearing love for the city of London shines through several of the more engaging, less hectic sequences, particularly the opening titles which look like a spinning rack of tourist-friendly postcards come to life (though the appearance of the soon-to-be-jailed celebrity paedophile Rolf Harris might have to be cautiously edited out, should the film ever receive a television airing). There's certainly fun to be had in spotting the ridiculous number of cameos from Cooney's showbiz chums - Jeffrey Holland! Russ Abbot! Brian Murphy! Derek Griffiths! Bernard Cribbins! Nicky Henson! Maureen Lipman! Prunella Scales! Donald Sinden! Richard Briers! You get the idea. It's as if Dyer lives in a world entirely populated by British celebrities from the seventies and eighties. Bags of fun for people like me, who don't have much of a life.

Sadly, these disparate elements are powerless to save the film from itself, and what worked beautifully on stage for the best part of a decade transfers to the screen looking more like a hideous, primary- coloured Chuckle Brothers romp with a slightly higher budget than what the unfortunate Mr Dyer rashly described as 'the ultimate British comedy'. For the first half, it's mostly inoffensive, broadly played slapstick, yet from the moment Christopher Biggins and Lionel Blair's staggeringly stereotypical pair of ageing queens are introduced, leading to an apparently endless sequence in which they try to clear up their flooded apartment, the film becomes an endurance test, a chore to sit through unleavened by some unpleasant homophobia and Denise Van Outen's subtlety-free and increasingly fever-pitched performance.

Yes, Denise Van Outen is in this - the former 'geezerbird' television presenter and lad's mag favourite, alongside former Girls Aloud performer Sarah Harding. Neither of whom are noted exponents of theatrical farce, of course, which begs the question - what are they doing here? They probably asked themselves that throughout the entire shoot. The remainder of the comic heavy lifting is left to Neil Morrissey, who by 2012 had long ceased to resemble the puppy-eyed lad- about-town familiar from Men Behaving Badly and had started to look as if he was suffering from the disorientating effects of early onset Alzheimer's - a situation not helped by the fact that his big comedy set-piece involves sitting on a large chocolate cake. All those accomplished comedy actors hamming it up on the sidelines, and the main four roles went to Dyer, Van Outen, Harding and Morrissey. There's no justice.

Worst of all, a sequel is optimistically promised (or rather threatened) in the end credit roll, this time based on another Cooney stage hit, Caught in the Act - which apparently takes place eighteen years after Run For Your Wife. If, by some fluke of chance, that one actually gets the green light, brace yourself for a fresh spate of "worst comedy ever!" reviews circa 2030.

The main problem with this film is that there are so many cameos. Ray Cooney seemed to invite everyone he knew in the world of stage and screen spanning the last 60 years! There are 141 cameos in total! They break up the pace of the film constantly.

I recently performed the stage version of this play, in both the UK and the US, with very receptive audiences who enjoyed it. The main thing was it stayed based in the 1980s as a period piece.

There are so many plot holes in this due to the film script not being updated enough. It's set in 2012, and people used mobile phones aplenty. Something this film forgets, and hopes the audience do.

Everything seemed to have been done on the first or second take. The level of acting on this is on par with a pantomime. With Christopher Biggins taking the accolade for most insufferable performance.

It doesn't help that John Smith played by Danny Dyer is so unlikeable as the main character that the audience is supposed to root for.

I laughed about 5 times in the whole film. Which is why it gets an extra star. What stops it from getting any more is the awful slapstick, puns, and actual pauses where they think the audience will be rolling around laughing. Where the only thing they'll actually be rolling is their eyes!

I was lucky, or should i say unlucky enough to attend the premiere of this film. And after about 10 minutes it was clear to me that what was in front of me was nothing better than a high school film project. Every aspect of this film was appalling. The screenplay was horrific, containing the most crude and unfunny jokes imaginable. The acting was as bad; poor Danny Dyer did the best he could considering what he had to work with but the two wives, Sarah Harding and Denise Van Outen took acting to a new low. Ray Cooney's directional ineptitude was also clearly apparent however good a stage writer he may claim to be.

The 90 minutes I had to spend watching this was truly the most tiresome experience I have ever had in a cinema. The hocus pocus plot I'm sure drove most of the audience round the bend and I felt a great deal better when the credits started to role. Everyone who had anything to do with this film must be regretting being a part of this project. It seems that the only point of this film was to give has beens of British film and television a few seconds of screen time.

It is no surprise Run for your Wife took a grand total of £602 in its first week and is being heralded as the worst film of the year.

Review: What a complete load of crap. The acting is terrible along with the storyline which was badly written with a appalling concept. This has to be Danny Dyer's worse film to date and all of the other actors should have stayed away from it. On the plus side, there are some familiar faces throughout the movie which people will remember when they were young, but apart from that, this is a massive waste of time. The pathetic situations that Danny Dyer finds himself in were unbelievable and very badly thought out. I think that you can tell that I REALLY hates this film,

Round-Up: I can't believe that someone got the budget for this film after reading the script, and to top it off, it looks like there considering a sequel, after seeing the end credits. This is also supposed to be Denise Van Outen's big break into movies, which was a bad idea. The thing that everyone should just put this movie behind them and try and come out with something decent.

Budget: £2.2million (Waste Of Money!) Worldwide Gross: N/A

I recommend this movie to people who like ridiculous comedies set around London. 1/10

Ray Cooney,s plays are expertly written for the stage and not for the cinema, when you watch works of his such as Wife begins at forty, Not now comrade and Not now darling which were filmed as if it was on a stage and they worked very well sadly this one wasn,t, the theatrical performance was brilliant but this one does fail, it,s not too bad but it does fail to show the genius of Ray Cooney.