Biggles

In answer to the insistently-asked question in the theme tune - yes, i do indeed want to be a hero, as evidenced in my bravery in admitting that this is, and long has been, a favourite film of mine.

This is a one of those films many people refer to as a "guilty pleasure", well - i feel no guilt or shame in declaring my love for this movie. It's simply brilliant fun. Great action adventure larks, with likable characters, a neat time-travel plot, a groovy '80s theme tune, and an appearance by genre legend Peter Cushing (in his final screen performance). Honestly, what more do you need? Oh, you need more, do you? OK, then: Francesca Gonshaw, the really cute barmaid from early seasons of 'Allo 'Allo, as a Belgian resistance fighter (i swear, if she's said "Listen very carefully, i shall say zis only once" in that accent, my mind - and indeed my pants - may have exploded). Also, for all of us watching Doctor Who in the mid to late '80s, roles for both James Saxon and Marcus Gilbert. How'd'ya like them apples?

Absolutely sublime nostalgic fun. To be watched with a few ales, alongside "The Living Daylights" or "Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Fear". Bliss!

I always believed I'd grow out of this film, but that hasn't happened yet. True, the plot's impossibly silly, but when I first watched the film, that didn't matter to me. Frankly, it still doesn't. Don't watch this film if you're looking for some serious intellectual stimulation. However, if it's great fun, great music and a major dose of eighties nostalgia you're after, this could be the one for you. One last thing - the main theme "Do you wanna be a hero" still sends shivers down my spine every time I see the opening credits.

I like this movie, having just seen it for the first time, and I have never read the original Biggles books. But, it's clear even to me that the film hasn't attempted to stay true to the original stories.

Nethertheless I found great entertainment value in this movie, which is simply to be enjoyed in a rather light hearted way it seems.

No doubt this time-travel based production was slip-streaming behind the great success of Back to the Future, and it's a real roller-coaster ride and a fantastic culture clash between the 1980's and WWI eras. Any such movie released back in the mid-eighties should have done well at the box office, at least on paper.

This film really is so eighties though, from the synthesiser-heavy intro music, down to the "punk scene", and the strikingly bleak grayish hotel lobby and eighties typefaces, that even people like myself who grew up in the eighties will probably feel more at home in what seems like the more "normal" WWI scenes.

Was the eighties really that potently eighties? Obviously, it was, but it didn't seem like that at the time of course.

So for me, this film has been a trip back in time to the eighties, and it fits in so well with a great sequence of other really enjoyable films I watched back then in my teenage years. I can't believe I somehow didn't see it at the time, but I'm really glad to have seen it at last in 2007.

The aircraft scenes were highly enjoyable, and it's always good to see Peter Cushing too.

7/10 from me.

This film is not meant to be taken seriously, but is a thoroughly enjoyable romp, with a lot of humour. I watch my recording from time to time, and still laugh at it.

I particularly liked the way that Col. Raymond explained to Ferguson that the Germans are developing a secret weapon that could change the outcome of WWI, as though the war is still taking place, rather than being long over. This film gave the feeling that the past is still just as real as the present, and is somehow happening at the same time - spooky!

The background music was excellent: the "So you want to be a hero?!" piece as the biplanes streaked along just over the ground, woods on both sides, was marvelous.

The supporting characters of Algy, Bertie and Ginger seemed to fit so well with the old Capt. W.E. Johns stories - the actors really looked the part. Neil Dickson was excellent as the brave but human British hero who, when Von Stalheim proposes a toast "To War", replies "To Peace". The film definitely captured some of the "Boy's Own" era of British story-telling, when the heroes were bold, resourceful and always ready to have a go at the enemy, regardless of the odds or the danger - but always remained polite and courteous.

I really don't understand why this film bombed out at the box-office; after all, we have all seen far worse films which did much better. Perhaps the name "Biggles" is too British to attract an American audience, who don't have the nostalgic fondness for the character that we who read the books in our youth have?

I hate to quibble with a comment but I had to offer some follow up to the comment regarding the disbelief of a German secret weapon during World War I. The concept for a wave type weapon has its origins before World War I with Nicola Tesla, who first postulated the notion of what has become known as scalar waves. Modern physics denies that such waves can exist but Tesla was convinced that they did and according to some he provided it (Tesla Horwitzer). The British actually developed the first theoretic underpinnings for a sound weapon of the type depicted in Biggles and frankly I thought that is where the idea came from. We "moderns" think far to much of our capabilities. What is happening today is that some open minded scientists are revisiting discarded Victorian science. How many people know that the modern principles of William Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic principles are taught today in a truncated form and that the missing parts may in fact provide the theory for effective wave weapons (ever wonder why the US government spends so much time on Star Wars technology?). By the 1930s, the Germans were developing a number of secret weapons including the so called death rays. I think it prudent to give early modern humans credit for being just as creative as our generation and a lot more open minded.