Movie Review by EDF
Starring: Christian Slater, Neve Campbell, Anthony Sher, Leslie Philips
Director: Peter Richardson
For years Hollywood has done its best to make World War 2 movies visually interesting. That is to say, you would find American soldiers popping up in stories where historically they were never anywhere in sight. This shameless retelling or retooling of the facts has usually meant that such movies have received the scorn of European movie reviewers. So why should Hollywood be the only ones to make these sort of movies and then have the audacity to market it as a serious movie? Well, this time round it’s the Brits who not only rewrite their own history and give the Americans a taste of their own medicine by taking the joke and the storyline one step too far.
Hollywood has decided to make a movie all about Churchill during the period known as World War 2 but there is one problem, Churchill is old and overweight. Aware that you will not be able to market such a heroic overweight figure to 21 st century moviegoers, an attractive action hero is instead cast to go head to head with those evil Nazis. Christain Slater is the man to do the job as the cigar chewing, skirt chasing rapper Winston Churchill and his side kick Eisenhower. Winston Churchill’s mission is to convince the American government that they should help the English government and stop the Nazis from taking power. Oh yeah, there is also a love interest between Churchill and Princess Elizabeth.
CHURCHILL: THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS is from the mind of Peter Richardson, one of the people responsible for the hilarious COMIC STRIP PRESENTS series from British TV. You can count the number of American actors in the cast on one hand and the rest are made up of English faces from a variety of British comedy shows such as THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, SMACK THE PONY, THE OFFICE and DEAD RINGERS. The story and humour are as absurd as anything from AIRPLANE or HOT SHOTS and why should Hollywood be the only ones to produce this sort of movie. The scenes are snappy enough so that even when the humour misses the mark, it never gets dull or boring. Yes, this will offend some people as it does use the names of historic figures, but that is the beauty of this film and you can laugh at a transposed view of how Hollywood sometimes perceives history and with the usual war movie cliches in tow.
