Whoops Apocalypse

If you're looking for the insanity and brilliance of the TV version here, look elsewhere. This is a pale imitation of the series, and a very dated movie. The movie version of Whoops is not like the TV series at all. In fact, it's really a remake in name only. The plot is completely different, centering around a skirmish in a small island run by the UK, and as a result, a royal princess is kidnapped and held for ransom until the island is returned to its people. This leads to a nuclear standoff with the Russians/Soviets. This was shot in the 1980's, so the plot mirrors the Falkland Islands situation at the time. While the original miniseries was also about the Cold War, it's much funnier and more timeless than this film. The film feels very compressed, rushing over things and trying to cram everything into a 90 minute running time. There are logic holes as well, especially dealing with the terrorist Lacrobat, played by Michael Richards. Lacrobat seems to be a magic man that has ready made disguises for every occasion and can outwit entire armies and nations in just a few minutes. Another issue is the rather silly ending. It feels lazy and even manipulative. There's also a really bad scene with a "rambogram" that feels like an outtake from The Naked Gun (which came out a year before this film).

Despite this, there are several great performances by Loretta Swit, Peter Cook, Ian Richardson, and as mentioned above, a funny turn by Michael "Kramer" Richards from Seinfeld. There are a few hilarious moments, mostly at the beginning of the film, but overall, it's a disappointing film.

There's a genre of spy thriller which involves Presidents, Prime Ministers and other heads of government, top police and spymasters, an assassin like Carlos the Jackal, and the imminent outbreak of WWIII. Whoops Apocalypse is one of those.

Just as Airplane is a disaster movie.

Not that Whoops Apocalypse is as funny as Airplane - there are too many scenes when the plot advances in a reasonably pointful fashion for that - but there are some inspired spoof scenes. There's a beautiful one when the Navy Officer gets his orders to report to his ship by nightfall - there are reasons why this isn't quite as poignant as the similar scenes in b&w 1942 movies.

Some bits of it may well seem inexplicable unless you remember that it was made in Britain in 1986, with the Falklands War still fairly fresh in people's minds, Di-mania a-booming, and Margaret Thatcher still running the country in demented fashion.

The highlight of the film is Peter Cook's portrayal of Prime Minister Sir Mortimer Chris: a high-powered Sir Bufton Tufton, fearfully right-wing and, as we discover, stark staring bonkers. Loretta Swit plays the US President a la Carol Channing, and a number of others kick in with decent cameos.

I'd like to see it again, to find out whether I got all the jokes the first time round - Airplane must have taken a dozen viewings before I'd spotted some of the really subtle touches. I suspect there is less to discover in this second and third time round, but it's not a bad attempt, overall.

This is a corny, horribly-paced comedy where you see every joke coming a mile away, and then they hit you over the head with the punchline as hard as they can. It starts off with some clown doing an "old people move slowly" joke that feels straight out of the early 1800s. Then the movie repeats the same joke. And it stays at that level of cornball laziness the whole time.

This movie LOVES dragging out & repeating its jokes to make sure they're as dead & unfunny as possible. Here's an island full of Russians wearing the same disguise, so let's hit you over the head with that 1 visual gag over and over and over for multiple scenes. Or here's a special ops squad breaking into a wax museum where they've heard the Princess is being held prisoner. Obviously the lamest, corniest joke you could do is "the soldiers think the wax dummies are real people," and the movie does that joke about 15 times.

OR they won't even bother with any jokes at all: Here's Michael Richards in blackface, does he say or do anything remotely funny? Nope, this is one of those movies that thinks "comedy means the audience is supposed to laugh, not that the actors are supposed to be funny."

Richards is a good example of the godawful directing in this movie, as he's horribly overdirected & saddled with a "funny" nasal voice most of the time (think Adam Sandler at his worst). It's obvious the screenwriter was in love with his own words, creating a tedious, talky script where the actors have barely any breathing room to add their own personality. The classy Peter Cook and the always-energetic Rik Mayall try their hardest to add some spark to their roles, but they're totally wasted as they shuffle through a series of incredibly lame jokes that might've "looked good on paper" but are a chore to actually sit through.

Meanwhile Loretta Swit plays the 1 major female character; as the US president, she's basically a boring sitcom mom who just wags her finger scoldingly at the male characters' clowning around. That's right, we get the cliche of every hack writer who has no idea how to make a woman funny or even interesting, so he just makes her the boring "smart" character who sits there. Of course, most of the movie follows this barely-even-a-character. Other characters in the movie actually DO things, but the closest thing we have to a protagonist is this boring plank of wood. How stupid do you have to be to fail that badly at basic screenwriting?

So if the comedians in the cast brought you to this movie, don't get your hopes up for an "underrated gem" or a "forgotten classic." Maybe to people who grew up in the 1950s and were sheltered from satire their entire lives, this movie was "outrageous," but even stuff made at least a decade earlier was harder-hitting. It's honestly depressing to see the talent completely wasted on this hacky, embarrassingly lame script. The only value in this movie is a guideline to young screenwriters: "do the opposite of this."

Name a genre of political or social satire. It is in this movie. Name a sacred cow that needs to be kicked in the udders. A swift kick is delivered in this movie. Here's a sample. Loretta Swit is selected as vice president of the US because it is "PC". His first day in office the president dies. Our first female president is faced with some serious foreign policy decisions and decides to seek the advice of the former president, Murray Hamilton. You get the first hint of outrageous satire when her limo arrives at the gates of a federal prison. Hamilton portrays a hilarious amalgamation of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in an understated performance that borders on genius. He takes a break from busting rocks and advises Swit with a lot of film-flam and jibber-jabber, then embraces the two Secret Services agents. They walk back to the limo talking about how the former president is the salt of the earth. When they turn around you see he has stolen the shirts off their backs while leaving their neckties and suit coats in place. After that the outrageous satire comes rapid fire in every scene. After every scene you think, "They can't upstage that." Then they do. In spades and doubled. It doesn't end until the end of the movie. See it with some friends. Laugh out loud.

One can always tell an excellent film if the opening credits make one guffaw ("The British partitioned the Island and took for themselves the upstairs rooms, fighting soon broke out of several mezzanines")and although the film wasn't quite Python it certainly had moments that made me snort my drink. The film did have a tendency to feel like a series of sketches but none the less Peter Cook's insane (although rather charismatic) Prime Minister is worth the purchase price alone. It was also some of the minor characters that provided some of the best laughs such as the former US president (looking the spitting image of Donald Rumsfeld) turned convict who published his memoirs "Commie Bastards I knew".

All in all an underrated classic