Trois hommes dans un bateau

The trouble with this film is it is very much of its time. It's hardly a film of the book, more an excuse to steal a few sparse ideas and try to string them together into a light-hearted comedy.

There's really far too much slapstick, and 1950's style girl-chasing, no real sense of a journey as there is in the book.

I wonder if anyone will ever make a proper adaption of the book, making proper use of JKJ's wonderful anecdotes? It would be tricky to do - they are often about completely different people from the three in the boat, but they are what make the book so good, and they've simply been discarded in the film.

So, in summary, if you've never read the book, you're in for a nice surprise: comedy that is still funny after a hundred years and more, but don't let this film put you off.

The DVD for "Three Men in a Boat" has no captioning. So, if you are hard of hearing or have difficulty with the accents, then you are screwed.

The first thing I noticed about this film is the odd casting decision for the leads. While Jimmy Edwards and David Tomlinson seem like natural choices for a comedy, I cannot understand casting Laurence Harvey as the third lead. After all, he had all the comic flair of a mortician and he was simply too pretty to be believable as the friend of the two idiots, Tomlinson and Edwards. Perhaps this odd casting choice can be explained, just a bit, because Harvey still hadn't established much of a screen persona, as his best films were ahead of him.

The film is a very slight comedy involving three male friends who decide to spend their holiday punting down the Thames (for non-Brits, this is 'boating down river'). They are definitely roughing it--camping out and cooking in the great (and often wet) outdoors. Such a vacation seems completely miserable but the three have some adventures (and, now that I think about it, this is practically the same plot as "Deliverance").

What bothered me about this film (aside from the casting) was the obviousness of the comedy. This is not to be confused with a sparkling Ealing comedy, as pratfalls and occasionally silly sound effects are the norm for "Three Men in a Boat". Oddly, however, despite this, the film often was very, very mundane--a very strange combination to say the least. As a result, I found the film tedious and unfunny.

When I saw this film advertised on Talking Pictures, I just had to watch it. I think I saw it as a child many years ago; but in the meantime I had read the book and wanted to compare the interpretation. To be honest, I didn't find the book that funny despite the opinion of many critics down the years. I had an interest because I'm from Walsall, Jerome K Jerome's home town (didn't his parents have any imagination!). Anyhow, as mentioned elsewhere, the film has little in common with the book. Some of the scenarios used e.g. the picnic, are related as happening to acquaintances rather than the main characters themselves. Having said that, the tin of pineapples scene was pretty faithfully rendered. So far as casting goes, I think they got it about right. I had no problems with Laurence Harvey as George, and thought he was an effective counter to David Tomlinson's bumbling and Jimmy Edward's bull-in-a-china shop approach. Although the slapstick episodes did become tedious.The females were of course window dressing. Jill Ireland played her vacant self, and Shirley Eaton was a bit too modern for the era. Particularly in the bath scene! Strangely, Lisa Gastoni was the only one who convinced (what happened to her?) Martita Hunt, never a beauty, but always a beautiful performance, gave us her usual character; the matriarch. And I wonder if she was ever in anything other than period costume dramas? The Hampton Court Maze scene was the best, with a host of British character actors running around wildly trying to get out. In all it wasn't a bad movie. Like the book, it sought to convey a picture of an idyllic England, long-since vanished. Although in reality, such a vision only ever existed for the privileged few. A true representation of the book would be difficult to reproduce, and probably wouldn't be half as interesting. Coincidentally, when I worked at a college some years ago, three students retraced the journey down the Thames in a boat one summer vac. Like in the film, it apparently rained a lot!

The Victorian era seemed like the good old days in the fifties, so the time was right for this Eastman Colour exercise in nostalgia with an agreeable score by John Addison; the Thames and Hampton Court Maze lending themselves well to the CinemaScope format and when national treasures A. E. Matthews, Earnest Thesiger & Miles Malleson put in an appearance lined up horizontally across the screen.

Shirley Eaton, Lisa Gastoni & Jill Ireland are much too modern as the young gentlemen's lady loves and Lawrence Harvey as George seems seriously out of place amidst the general levity, particularly strumming a ukulele; his presence in the cast being accounted for by the influential friend he then had at Romulus Films.

I read the reviews of Three Men in a Boat before watching the film and couldn't believe that it is as bad as most reviewers claim. I mean to say, just look at the cast. Tomlinson, Edwards and Harvey are not a collection of comedic geniuses, perhaps, but surely they amass enough talent to produce an amusing adaptation of this admired novel. However, the negative reviewers are correct: this film is simply terrible. Although it only runs to 84 minutes it took me five sittings to get through it. I could barely tolerate watching twenty minutes at a time. I persevered because…well, look at the cast, surely they would deliver something funny eventually; perhaps the finale would be hilarious.

I grew up in Britain and still love old British comedies: Ealing, of course, Will Hay, Alastaire Sim, Peter Sellers, and so many others. I even like the lower-level comedy of the Carry On series, Benny Hill, or Frankie Howerd. This film, though, has less laughs than Polanski's Macbeth.

Some reviews have suggested that some people find the film unamusing because it is 'dated.' It was made in the fifties and set in the 1880s. However, these facts alone shouldn't be detrimental to a film's appeal. A good number of Britain's best and most appreciated comedies were made in the fifties, such as The Lavender Hill Mob, Hobson's Choice, and I'm All Right Jack. In fact, the decade is a Golden Age for British film comedy. The story's setting in an earlier period can hardly be detrimental either. Kind Hearts and Coronets stands easily as one of the best British comedies, yet it was set in the same historical period as Three Men in a Boat, was released six years earlier and was filmed in black and white. Similarly, Ken Annakin, this film's director, had his biggest successes with Monte Carlo or Bust! (1969) and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), both of which are set in times only slightly later than Three Men in a Boat and are equally far removed from contemporary audiences, but are still relatively amusing.

Some films age badly because of the focus of the material. George Formby and the Old Mother Riley comedies relied for their context on a particular interwar period and a British working class culture that had largely disappeared by the 1960s and has little meaning for people in contemporary Britain, let alone the rest of the world. Other examples are the sex comedies made in Britain in the 1970s or the blacksploitation movies made in the US in the same decade. These films are clearly dated but retain entertainment value because of their anachronistic fashions and dialogue.

Astonishingly, Three Men in a Boat was nominated for a BAFTA for, of all things, best screen play. This is baffling because the writers make little effort to drive the story with witty dialogue. Dialogue is, in fact, rather scant. The attempts at comedy come mostly from slapstick situations where our heroes wave tent poles and oars around for insufferable lengths of time, fall in the water repeatedly, and prattles on loudly and unintelligibly. The assumption is, apparently, that if these situations continue for long enough something funny simply has to happen. It doesn't. Slapstick can be badly done but it doesn't become dated. The silent movies of Chaplain and Keaton are still wonderful; the Three Stooges are still ridiculous and funny; much in Norman Wisdom's movies is dated, but when he falls through a window he is still hilarious. Not so Tomlinson, Edwards and Harvey.

On this one, I'm afraid, I concur with the "smug" negative reviewers. This is the least funny Brit Com I've ever seen, and I've seen "Carry on England."