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.
