A weak script with unlikeable supporting characters spoiled what could have been a great idea. As it is, The Royal Bodyguard is funny as a gentle comedy. It is not something David Jason will be remembered for, despite trying hard. Some people have said it would have been saved by a younger actor, but to me, this looks like missing the point. The premise is that Guy Hubble, a forgotten member of the security forces is given the job as a car park attendant so that he can carry on working out of harms way, but through being in the wrong place at the right time he impresses HM The Queen so much that she insists he be promoted way above his level of competence. It's a one joke film, of course. The only way the premise can be stretched is that everyone else is incompetent too. We have incompetent senior civil servants, incompetent security guards, even incompetent terrorists. It could be argued that the Queen herself is incompetent to be taken in, to the extent of insisting on Hubble being kept in his job. That is the weakness of the concept. An incompetent security officer in a highly efficient security department facing well organised, highly disciplined terrorists could have been far more suspenseful and therefore far funnier when the comedy relieved the tension. Instead we get situations where everyone falls over their own and each others' feet and Hubble wins by being the last man standing. This is not intelligent comedy at all.
Comparisons have been made with Norman Wisdom. But Norman Wisdom comedies had sympathetic characters. The foils for Wisdom's antics were always the mighty brought down. In The Royal Bodyguard, we don't care about any of the other characters, and the mighty are brought down by their own incompetence as much as anything.
There is one big mistake in Hubble's character. He blames everyone else. This is a believable flaw, but it alienates him from us. Hubble does too much of it. It is not well written because he is always childishly shouting, "That was your fault!" it is one thing to let someone take the blame, but to deliberately blame innocent passers by is not the way to endear audiences.
I have given this a fairly generous score of five out of ten. This is entirely for David Jason. He brings pathos to what would be - in real life - a tragedy. This is a story about someone who is overconfident and in over his head; an old man who is too proud to retire and take a less active role and who pathetically attempts to look younger by wearing an obvious wig. People like that really exist and, in these days, there are probably more of them than ever. With better writing, this could have rocked. With poor writing it crumbles.
