What a Whopper

I don't see why this film as so many bad reviews, It's a pleasing British comedy of it's era (1961) with a cracking cast.

It's the type of film you'd get on BBC2 on a wet afternoon when I was a kid.

How can any film with Sid James, Spike Milligan (Who seems to be in the wrong film...), Charles Hawtrey not be an easy pleasing nostalgic view?.

Maybe I'm of the last generation that appreciates this type of film...I hope not.

I saw this film advertised in the paper but with no review. So I taped it off BBC2 then watched it having just seen that it had Adam Faith and Sid James in it. I would rate it as a 12 because although there is no swearing or actual sex scenes in it;the humour is mostly innuendo. This film is not mentioned in 1)the Virgin film guide

2)Halliwells Who's Who in the movies

3)Leonard Maltins movie & video guide. Which I have found to mean films they want to forget which are generally gems.Another example being "Langrishe go down" with Dame Judi Dench. Besides the afore mentioned "What A Whopper" also had Wilfred Bramble Charles Haughtrey, Spike Milligan and Clive Dunn make for an impressive if refreshingly UNPC mild comedy.

A young, raffish down-on-his-luck writer with a gimlet-sharp eye for the young ladies (Adam Faith) ambitiously hatches an ingeniously madcap plot to orchestrate a sighting of the infamously elusive Loch Ness Monster with a little help from his amiably eccentric, Nessie-faking beatnik chums in Gilbert Gunn's delightfully kooky 60s comedy caper! 'What A Whopper!' is not only endowed with a truly 'whopping' cast of iconic film and telly-box favourites, including Terry Scott, Clive Dunn, Wilfrid Brambell, Spike Milligan and bawdy comedy Lothario par excellence Sid James, and Blake's 7 showrunner Terry Nation's pratfall-perfect, wonderfully whacky, slapstick n' tickle script, while admittedly a small scale, frequently fishy cinematic affair is also a Loch of monster-sized laffs!

The soothingly nostalgic British comedy 'What A Whopper!' is atmospherically set against the bucolic majesty of mountainous, myth-laden Scotland, a suitably bracing backdrop for the hilariously outlandish hi-jinks and blissfully bonkers buffoonery of our bungling beatniks! Their intrepid attempt to contrive a media frenzy about the sudden return of the legendary lake dwelling diva Nessie not infrequently inspires some especially inspired lunacy by our endearingly shambolic, far from expert fraudsters! Frothily factor in some dreamy sing-along Adam Faith pop, alongside no less fine compositions by music maestro Laurie Johnson, heroically hyping up the crowd-pleasing multitude of amusingly silly rough N' tumble comedy shenanigans, all being breezily directed by the talented Gilbert Gunn guarantees that fans of vintage British comedy will find the galloping gag-fest 'What A Whopper!' a warmly-fuzzy feel-good delight from start to finish.

This is a family film with light humour and some lovely remembrancers of the sixties era, with baby doll nightgowns and pink angora sweaters...

Some early appearances by later UK comedy greats- an early old-man Clive Dunn, some early Wilfred Brambell etc make it worth watching.

The story about the Loch Ness Monster is pure tosh but the film never takes itself seriously at all and it is similar to a rather toned down very early Carry On film, relatively gentle.

English humour from the 60's.

A silly British comedy written by Terry Nation rife with leering sexual and regional stereotypes (like Adam Faith in a kilt and fake beard adopting a Scottish accent pretending to be 'Hamish MacSporran'), that actually went to Loch Ness for a few shots (although with outdoor night scenes obviously shot in broad daylight).

The plot is based on a central fallacy, since Faith is reduced to faking a photograph of Nessie on the Serpentine as he can't get his book on the subject published because the Great Orm hasn't been seen for ages; yet the simple fact that this film was being made attests to the current topicality of the Loch Ness Monster. And his popularity as a pop idol accounts for his presence in this nonsense woodenly playing the lead; compensated for by a supporting cast ranging from Amanda Barrie & Trevor Peacock seen uncredited in long shot even before the credits (which do include Peacock for the original story) are over, Jamaican actor Lloyd Reckford in his only credited film role prior to the 1990s, Spike Milligan as a tramp, Terry Scott in his days typecast as a police sergeant to Fyfe Robertson and the late Freddie Frinton (the latter totally forgotten to any Briton under sixty but a household name in Germany thanks to his annual appearances every New Year's Eve in 'Dinner for One').

(SPOILERS COMING:) It's a typical bit of cynicism on Nation's part that once Faith claims to see Nessie, everybody standing alongside him on the shore jumps on the bandwagon by claiming to see him too. While the actual sound and visual effects of Nessie himself are in fact rather good.