Ask a Policeman

Ask a policeman, to my mind, is one of the greatest comedies ever made!!! Sure you might not see it on everybody's top 10 comedy lists but that's probably because they have never heard, nor seen the film before!!! Every second has a comic gem, not one minute goes by without an erruption of laughter from it's audience. It truly is one of the most underrated comedies ever made. I suggest you all go seek it out and find this out for yourselves!!!

Will Hay's best-known film is the classic "Oh, Mr Porter" but this one isn't far behind. Hay is cast in his favourite role ; a seedily incompetent authority figure who conceals his uncertainty behind bluster and bombast.

This is one of those rare films where the plot is almost an intrusion ; who cares about a smuggling ring in rural England, when we can instead enjoy the antics of Hay and his cohorts, playing possibly the most inept police team in the history of law enforcement. Their attempts to set a speed trap, and then to justify their results to an irate motorist, may be the high spot of the film.

The small English village of Turnbottom Round prides itself on being the safest place in the United Kingdom. All due to the crack law enforcement team of Will Hay and his two second bananas Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. In fact they're so good they haven't made any arrests in ten years, didn't even pick up a drunk for a night to sleep it off. They even have a BBC broadcast to celebrate this town and its peaceful nature and peaceful cops.

But someone decides this little sinecure has gone on long enough. What to do, but create some crime. But these three muck up traffic arrests.

Their salvation of sorts might be a suspected smuggling ring which has taken advantage of the lax police work and operates with impunity. Not that Turnbottom Round PD does anything really but the bad guys are rounded up in spite of Hay and his staff.

Some really funny sequences including the BBC broadcast where no one can quite get the use of the microphone right, the search for the smugglers, the attempts at enforcing traffic laws and how that works out and the final chase scene where Turnbottom Round's finest commandeer a bus for their pursuit.

This nicely done Will Hay comedy could have been a model for Police Academy movies.

What a comedy! This is a movie that had me laughing from beginning to end. Even after all these years the one line gags from Will Hay are superbly timed. The movie plot about smugglers is good but all three main characters make this film a real hoot as local village policemen. I have this on video and watch it regularly if I need a laughter pick-me-up! Classic line, they need to arrest someone to prove the village needs a local bobby, Moffatt suggests Guy Faulkes, to which Will Hay replies "he's not a criminal, he invented fireworks" brilliant!

Please watch it, you'll love it.

Wacky British humor abounds in this story of three bumbling policemen (including a very old man and a very overweight youth) who run the tiny station in the quiet (so quiet there's nothing out at night except, of course, the night-riding "Headless Horseman") English village of Turnbottom Round where there has not been a single arrest made in over ten years. Promoting with pride this lack of crime on a radio program one evening, the next day the station gets a notice from the chief constable that their station is no longer needed, the policemen working there to be "retired or transferred". So - our three officers come up with the idea to *create* some crime, first putting up a local "speed trap", then later getting mixed up with a gang of real smugglers.

This film is, yes, quite silly, but very entertaining and amusing - boosted up considerably by the three actors who play the policemen. They seem to have a real camaraderie and rapport with each other, all look like they're having a great deal of fun making this. One very funny scene has the oldest policeman visiting, of all things, his even older father - played by the same actor, dressed up in bed with long white beard. One missed bit of humor I thought they could have done here though - they mention that the father still has a living wife and I thought it would have been funny if they had the same actor dress as her too and come out into the room. In fact, that is what I was expecting when the woman was mentioned, but it didn't happen - ah well. A quite humorous and enjoyable film.