Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution

This is the first review I have written on IMDb, and I do so only because I feel the other reviews have been ridiculously unjust to this light-hearted, frothy, and thoroughly enjoyable comedy.

For pure escapist fun, pervaded by a gentle and giggly sense of humour that never takes itself seriously, I recommend this movie highly. In many ways, it reminded me of the innocent spirit and child-like joie-de-vivre of "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins". Indeed, I'd go so far as to say that if you're in any way a fan of the aforementioned two classics, then you will almost certainly feel that watching "Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution" was time well spent.

I would probably have scored this movie a genuine 7/10, but I feel the necessity to counteract the ridiculously low scores given so far.

Yes, okay, it's not laugh a minute, but that is the point.... It is based on real life - what would happen if a person genuinely believed the communist ideal and moved their family to east Germany in the sixties?

Reminiscent of Hideous Kinky, this is a genuine look back from the point of view of a daughter in an unusual and poignant situation. The movie handles the story with charm and while moments are a little cheesy, it is well worth viewing, particularly for fans of Catherine Tate, who does a great job here.

I guess it depends if your glass is half full or half empty!!

I really like this film and I'm interested in this period in general, and I like the fact that it's based on a real family story.

I think Catherine Tate is just incredible here as both a comedic and dramatic actress. You probably know how good she can be with a good script like in Doctor Who, but here, too, there are quite a few moments where she just shines. Iain Glen is also great. I think the whole cast did a great job, the kids were also very memorable.

I would love to see this get a wider release on streaming services one day, since, unfortunately, I've only ever watched it in absolutely terrible quality.

Der Spiegel (Spiegel-Online)July 03, 2009 Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism By Julia Bonstein

Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

The life of Birger, a native of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in northeastern Germany, could read as an all-German success story. The Berlin Wall came down when he was 10. After graduating from high school, he studied economics and business administration in Hamburg, lived in India and South Africa, and eventually got a job with a company in the western German city of Duisburg. Today Birger, 30, is planning a sailing trip in the Mediterranean. He isn't using his real name for this story, because he doesn't want it to be associated with the former East Germany, which he sees as "a label with negative connotations."

And yet Birger is sitting in a Hamburg cafe, defending the former communist country. "Most East German citizens had a nice life," he says. "I certainly don't think that it's better here." By "here," he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons. "In the past there was the Stasi, and today (German Interior Minister Wolfgang) Schäuble -- or the GEZ (the fee collection center of Germany's public broadcasting institutions) -- are collecting information about us." In Birger's opinion, there is no fundamental difference between dictatorship and freedom. "The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel."

Birger is by no means an uneducated young man. He is aware of the spying and repression that went on in the former East Germany, and, as he says, it was "not a good thing that people couldn't leave the country and many were oppressed." He is no fan of what he characterizes as contemptible nostalgia for the former East Germany. "I haven't erected a shrine to Spreewald pickles in my house," he says, referring to a snack that was part of a the East German identity. Nevertheless, he is quick to argue with those who would criticize the place his parents called home: "You can't say that the GDR was an illegitimate state, and that everything is fine today."

After The Lives of Others and Goodbye Lenin, two good films about the old East Germany produced in the home country, along come the Brits with "Carry On Up The DDR", a truly shameful piece of "work." If there's anything interesting to write about this completely dreadful movie which I saw last night at the splendid Ritz in Belper, I can't think of it. So why write a review? Merely to accentuate the message from the one previous IMDb commentator here before me and urge you to avoid it at all costs. Waiting in a dark alley to get mugged would be better usage of time and money than paying for this shocking dreck.

If there's an interesting question to pose about it, it would be this: how could the two writers of Sixty-Six, a very good and at its conclusion really quite moving film, go on to produce this heap of amateurish, chronically scripted, sloppy, wildly historically inaccurate, half-dimensional, miserably thought-out garbage? My guess is that after the critical, if not commercial success of that soulful, intelligent Jewish father-son World Cup '66 movie, one that captured the spirit of the times quite uncannily well, they were asked by someone or other wanting to make a movie, 'what else have you got?'. Surely on the point of throwing away the script for Mrs R's R - something they wrote as fifth formers in between their Physics and Maths homework - they said, 'well, we've got this...'

What more to say? Perhaps someone should report the Worst Scene From A Movie in 2007, the Oughts, the 21st century, Cinematic History, etc: the one where to let the audience know what a dump of a state flat the Radcliffes were stuck in, a rat appears on the record player, disrupting the music. Wait: that's not it. Next shot is the East German neighbour bashing to death said (enormous) rat - rat out of shot, with heavy object. Cue next scene.

That was it. That was supposed to be funny (I promise you), on its own. No witty out-line, no cut to (the pretty bad, here) Catherine Tate making funny facial expression, no blood and guts-spurts-out-of-rat-into-rat-killer's-face (if only). Nothing.

Two cheerier things to finish with: one, the movie got some laughs from the Derbyshire audience, so it's possible that the film won't be as depressing an experience for you as it was for me if anyone forces you to go see it; two, the price of a Ritz ticket is one of the cheapest in the UK.

So, a grim embarrassment for the British film industry then: 'Carry On Up The DDR' pretty much sums it up for this writer, but with no Sid James,Kenneth Williams or Charles Hawtrey to redeem it.

T