Blucher
One of the worst movies I've ever seen
Organnall
Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,
Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
RaspberryLucozade
'On The Buses' is in my book one of the funniest and most underrated British sitcoms of all time. Despite running for seven series and spawning three movie spin-offs, it strangely seems to have fallen off the radar.'On The Buses' was the brainchild of writing duo Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney and starred the late, great Reg Varney as cheeky chappie bus driver Stan Butler. The premise was pretty basic - Stan worked for the Luxton & District bus company and lived with his domineering mother ( Cicely Courtneidge, then Doris Hare ), his well meaning but none too bright sister Olive ( Anna Karen ) and her layabout husband Arthur ( Michael Robbins ). His best friend is Jack Harper ( Bob Grant ), who also works for Luxton & District as a conductor and spends much of his time with Stan either trying to pull the clippies or making life hell for the small minded Inspector Cyril Blake ( Stephen Lewis ).The idea was originally put to the BBC by Wolfe and Chesney but the corporation, thinking it would not have been a success, rejected it ( despite the fact that the writers had earlier devised for them the hugely successful 'The Rag Trade' and 'Meet The Wife' ). It was then taken to ITV where Frank Muir, then head of the light entertainment department of London Weekend Television, recognised the show's potential. The critics tore it apart, of course, but viewers took to it straight away.If you were to discern from my description of 'On The Buses' that it was cheap, smutty and had all the subtlety of a slap in the face with a wet fish, you would be right, but to say that it wasn't funny would be nothing short of churlish. I have been a fan of 'On The Buses' ever since I was a child and to this day I never tire of watching it. 'On The Buses' was also a hit over in America, so much so that they even attempted their own version - 'Lotsa Luck' - which starred the late Dom DeLouise as Stan Belmont, a lost property clerk at New York City's bus depot. It bombed.My favourite characters apart from Stan and Jack, were Mum and Arthur. Michael Robbins in particular was one of the jewels in the show's crown and when he left after series six it just was not the same. To make matters worse, Reg Varney jumped ship half way through the final series as he felt the show was running itself into the ground. That seemed to be it for 'On The Buses'. Well, no, not quite. Stephen Lewis' Blakey received his own show - 'Don't Drink The Water' - in which he, along with prudish sister Dorothy ( Pat Coombs ), retired to Spain. Anna Karen's Olive was also spun off into another show - the late '70's retread of 'The Rag Trade'. A revival entitled 'Back On The Buses' ( reuniting the entire cast including Michael Robbins ) was planned in the early '90s but due to Reg Varney's health problems, the project was sadly abandoned.Even allowing for the fact that much of it has dated, 'On The Buses' is still an absolute joy to watch and will remain so for years to come. Favourite episode? Probably it would be 'Brew It Yourself' in which Stan takes up home brewing. Second to that would be 'Vacancy For Inspector' in which Jack gets promoted to the rank of inspector.
maximum1969
Where to start? Poor writing, lame acting and direction. The worst excesses of 1970's "comedy" The jokes, so called, are over played and hammy. The direction suggests that the louder you say a line, the funnier it is!! When you remember that Monty Python was just being born, snd comedies like Dads Army were around, or Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads as two examples. This dross just does not compare. The characterisations just are not funny. Proof again that I.T.V. just couldn't do comedy! Other than Rising Damp perhaps. Avoid,unless you are brain dead, very lonely or think that the height of sophistication is drinking Special Brew lager out of a can with a curly straw.
parcdelagrange
21st August 1969, the BBC was running a whole evening covering the landing on the moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin earlier that day, ITV was showing the most recent episode of 'On The Buses', I was in borstal at the time, and this was long before the days of prisoners having TV in cells, we had one television (black and white) in the recreation room, which we were allowed to watch for half an hour hour each night, there were only 3 channels to choose from, BBC, ITV and BBC2, and the 'screws' used to ask for a show of hands to see which channel we would watch on any particular evening. You may have thought, that because of the importance of the event, we would overwhelmingly vote to watch the moon landing ... you would be wrong, we voted almost unanimously to watch 'On The Buses' .. that was the popularity of the programme back then. Now, over 40 years later and watching it on re-runs, I can still see why we voted as we did. It was so ludicrous that it was brilliant, the characters were all of the seaside comic postcard variety, even back in the late 60's/early 70's, the idea of a 40 year old man living with his mother and dysfunctional sister/brother-in-law would be considered suspicious, and the notion that 2 middle aged and not particularly good looking men at that, would be able to 'pull clippies' young enough to be their daughters is the basic joke the series revolved around. It is good old fashioned, bawdy, slapstick fun, not meant to be taken seriously, and all the better for not being fettered by being made before the political correct brigade ruined entertainment as we knew it.
Sebastian (sts-26)
Back in the early seventies, when I was a very small child, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) ran On The Buses on Sundays in the late evening. During holidays (Christmas, the summer) I would be allowed to stay up and watch. I loved the show, even though most of the jokes went right over my head; there was, despite the jibes, a sense of family and community, and a complete lack of airs and graces (this was no Masterpiece Theatre presentation).There was something warm and fuzzy about the show; it captured the ramshackle coziness of mid-twentieth century English working class life so often depicted on television, in the movies and literature (maybe more a folksy ideal than actual reality). And for Anglophiles, shows like On The Buses provided THE lexicon - Gordon Bennet, a good cuppa, blimey, a bit of how's your father. Many British comedies followed in Buses' footsteps - most notably Are You Being Served and Only Fools and Horses- and were better produced, better acted, and longer lived, but this was one of the first great iconic English working class comedies.Before the arrival of VCRs I would often wish for another viewing of On The Buses, but it never came - first, there were waves of British TV programs washing up on North American shores, and so there was no looking back, then the flood of VHS, then DVD, releases made an actual TV run unnecessary. However, a specialty channel in Canada began televising the show again, and I was pleased to see that the magic is still there.Go on, put the kettle on, and let's have a butcher's.
