Fooling Hitler

Essentially a very good and long overdue concept for a film / miniseries / drama-doc, but struggling to cope with an obviously pitiful budget and a truly awful script.

Most of the cast did their best - but seemed to be on day-release from otherwise more exciting projects, some of them trying too hard to make something of their highly compressed roles and mangled text - the Dennis Wheatly character tottering on the edge of hammy camp.

Its a really strong concept, how British ( and later American ) tech-bods came up with countless concepts to fool, be muddle and confuse the Germans on a shoestring budget - from thousands of plywood aircraft to draw fire away from real aerodromes - to exploding rats and dummy parachutists, its examines the triumph of imagination and creativity over brute force, many of the ideas were original and intriguing - with plenty of humour and human interest, but it was handicapped by an obviously small budget and really small scale direction, in parts it came across as a dramatised educational program from the late '70's.

You never know - perhaps someone with deeper pockets will see this and realise that the foundation of a very good film is in here - after all -' someone' thought Enigma was a good idea, and as 'Downfall' has shown us, you can produce an astonishing quality war film based in the confines of a bunker - so why not one with the 'Back-room-boys'?

When I saw this film I wasn't quite sure what to expect. There have been so many films made about the Second World War that it seemed there was little else to add. I'm pleased to say I was surprised and that I found myself both rooting for the characters and learning about a vital and overlooked aspect of the war.

The cast, especially Jason Durr and Richard Lintern seemed to manage that tricky balancing act of combining humour and seriousness with particular aplomb.

The film also had a definite visual style. I'm sure that there were stiff budget contraints to get such an epic tale on television but as the action mounts they are not visible. Recommended.

This was a very enjoyable story of the methods of deception used by the allies against the Germans in WWII. It was more drama than documentary and much of the detail especially about the gadgets issued to spy's and agents was omitted (other than the rat), as well as the way these agents worked. However the main gist of this secret work was described along with the struggle by those carrying out this work to be taken seriously.

Acting was adequate but the special effects and CG generated A/C had some errors. Historical accuracy was reasonable but shallow and dumbed down. The RAF Dambuster squadron was mentioned, but not its actual number for instance.

On the whole a reasonable attempt to describe a lesser known aspect of WWII to those who would probably never watch a regular documentary in a month of Sundays.