Brilliant and touching

Am I Missing Something?

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

In July 1971, 'On The Buses' made its way to the big screen. Its astonishing box office performance not only won it the title of 'most popular film of 1971' ( even beating 'Diamonds Are Forever' ) but also prompted a sequel in June 1972 - 'Mutiny On The Buses'.The first film drew some complaints for the coarsening of the humour. 'Mutiny On The Buses', if not worse, was no better, with toilet humour ( Little Arthur constantly trying to take a dump on his potty while the family are eating ) and even violence ( Olive and another clippie have a cat-fight at the busmen's darts match ) being introduced. Wolfe and Chesney yet again wrote and produced while Harry Booth was brought in again as director.The main basis of the plot is this - Stan becomes engaged to sexy clippie Suzy ( Janet Mahoney ). She wants them to buy a house together but when he fails to come up with enough money for the deposit, he suggests that they live with his family for the time being, but Suzy is reluctant to settle down unless they have their own space. However Stan's dreams of moving out are thwarted when Arthur loses his job and is unable to support the family. In desperation, Stan teaches Arthur to drive so he can get a job as a bus driver.Arthur's first attempt at driving is a disaster. He takes of at great speed, with Stan dangling from the door of the cab, only then to crash into a nearby stable. Eventually, he improves and gets a job as a driver. A sub-plot has Stan and Blakey driving a tour bus around Windsor Safari Park, only for a lion to climb aboard the bus and then later a chimpanzee!It's an okay film, but in my view the first one is better. It is by and large episodic, one scene where Stan and Jack tow Arthur's motorbike on the back of the bus was a direct lift from the series two episode 'The Used Combination' while Stan and Jack tampering with the radios newly installed in their buses was taken from the series three instalment 'Radio Control'. The Safari park sequence towards the end for me is when the film starts to grow tiresome. However Hammer Films must have been impressed enough with it as a third and final film - 'Holiday On The Buses' - went on release in December 1973. Among the best scenes were the cat-fight between Olive and 'Nymphie Norah' ( a clippie who Arthur seems to have a thing going with, played by Pat Asthon ), which culminates in Norah getting a jug of water tipped over her head by Mrs. Butler, a botched fire drill at the depot in which the whole depot is engulfed in foam, Stan reversing into the bus company's new van, crushing it like a beer can and Olive falling off of Arthur's bike and down a manhole. The film's catchy theme tune was an accordion arrangement composed by Ron Grainer.A continuity problem occurs here - Olive at the end of the film claims she is pregnant for a second time yet the new baby never appeared in the next film. Did she have a miscarriage? Was she lying in order to guilt Stan into not leaving home? We never found out.Funniest bit - the twice mentioned cat-fight sequence!

Stumbled upon the movie on the telly today. It was like watching a car crash. Horrific, but couldn't stop watching. The writing, the acting, the plot... All were competing to see which could be the biggest turd. Seriously, really, really bad. Don't say you weren't warned. The gentleman playing the boss of the other drivers was particularly pathetic, and I almost thought that the writers were trying to get him to make fun of the mentally deficient. Random scenes were added willy-nilly throughout the film which made this stinking pile of crap even worse, if that is even possible.Also, the actors when delivering their pathetic lines, were often staring off into space, as if there were no director on the set. I have seen fifth grade school plays that were more cognizant than this disgrace to movie making. The makers of this film should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Watched this last weekend as part of ITV 3's British Comedy Weekend and for all Mutiny isn't quite as funny as the first film, the jokes about Olive's baby breaking wind are a bit tiresome and crass, it's still a very amusing and totally politically incorrect film( the female clippies are all big busted and sexually easy and Stan and Jack are constantly making the kind of wisecracks that would give Ben Elton a heart attack).Basically the film concerns Blakey's schemes to get at the drivers by installing radios in their cabs to monitor their workshy behaviour- with some justification as Stan and Jack in one scene are seen playing darts against a side of a bus- but as ever Stan and Jack get the better of him by tuning the radios to police and airport frequencies with very amusing results. Also Stan is engaged to a female clippy and as money is to be tight at home when he moves out, he teaches his brother in law to drive a bus rather ineptly as it turns out. Yet to me the highlight of the film is when Stan and Blakey take a trip bus to Windsor Safari Park and a chimp takes control of the bus with demented results and a lion climbs on the bus and bites both men in the nether regions.Obviously the film is corny and rather dated now and the PC brigade and the film snobs loathe these films with a passion, but Mutiny is still hilarious in places and I must admit having a thing for the tarty clippies that Jack and Stan lust after. Also if Mutiny on the Buses is so awful, how come it's always repeated and the television series still has a devoted following.

Mutiny on the Buses is a sophisticated, intertextual, self-reflexive discourse on the nature of the classic novel by Charles Nordhoff. It also takes in Kafkaesque leanings by exercising a circular narrative. That some could mistake it for a witless, charmless and crass 70s sex comedy is beyond me.The film also exhibits a razor-sharp social conscience. After accidentally demolishing a stop, Jack (Bob Grant) suggests "We'll say some hooligans did it... lot of stupid louts doing things like that these days." In all seriousness though it really is utter garbage. There's an increase in slapstick, the ineptness of which would be funny were it not for the jingly-jangy 70s soundtrack. Definitely not one of Ron Grainer's better days.In its defence, this one probably has a better plot than the others (which isn't exactly difficult) as Blakey gets a new manager to assess his operation. Blakey's forced to clamp down with more stringent rules, cueing an inevitable worker rebellion. When Blakey orders his staff to wear "nothing but their uniforms", they come without shoes and shirts. This also includes the seven-strong female crew, who like nothing better than exposing their breasts to the entire staff. Even a company darts night can be rigged by showing a pair of red knickers.The climactic pay-off is a shameless plug for Windsor Safari Park, with a lion and monkeys on the bus. However, this desperate pile of contrived cheese is again salvaged by the wonderful Stephen Lewis. Some of the situations are just gross - a baby defecates in a potty while Stan's at the dinnertable. Rather predictably, he later excretes in Arthur's cap. The baby, that is. Not Stan, though that would have probably been funnier. As with my two other Buses reviews, I have to stress the humour division inherent in the set-up. When Blakey (A creation of comic genius in Lewis's hands) is on screen, it's hilarious. When he isn't, it's absolutely dire. Most of the "humour" is, as usual, shockingly un-PC. Stan strings girls along with the promise of marriage in order to get sex, and accuses Blakey of being a homosexual. Other unsettling scenes show Michael Robbins shaking his baby and screaming for it to "Shut up!" Letting off a foam extinguisher in someone's face is also shown to be within acceptable safety guidelines. A clothes-ripping catfight threatens to engender interest, though is foiled by involving Anna Karen. This is particularly nauseous when Reg Varney accidentally gropes his screen sister's left breast.Very occasionally a line might get a laugh in an unforeseen modern context. After seeing a female conductor emerging with Stan from the top deck, Blakey cries: "You know the regulations, you're not even supposed to eat your lunch upstairs." Yes, this film is truly terrible... yet in a funny sort of way I can't help but like it.