hyped garbage

Fantastic!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I can recall the day well. It was the summer of '82. Maggie Thatcher was running rampage through both British Industry and the South Atlantic. The dole queue had just topped 4 million and Arthur Scargill had just declared class war on the monetarists. I was young, reckless and madly in love. Her name was Elizabeth, daughter of a methodist preacher and for our second date we decided to go to the movies.There wasn't much on at the local flea pit that interested us, but she suggested we go and check out this film. After all, she said, it might be worth a laugh. Now I had my reservations. I didn't find Tommy and Bobby's TV offerings all that entertaining at the best of times (the term puerile springs to mind), but she was insistent, so we paid our money and entered the cinema.I am still in therapy for what followed. There on the screen was a turgid rehash of every Will Hay film I have ever watched with a large number of Norman Wisdom 'gags' thrown in for good measure. Although I use the term Gags in the loosest possible terms. Will Hay and Norman Wisdom are funny, Cannon and Ball are not. From the wince-some traffic chaos at the start to the contrived slapstick car chase at the end we sat in awkward and embarrassed silence as Tommy and Bobby hammed their way through 50 year old jokes with complete disregard for timing or humour.I would like to think it was just me having a sense of humour failure, but the cinema was half full at the start, nearly empty at the end and completely devoid of laughter throughout. We left the cinema feeling totally cheated and asked for our money back... and got it thanks to a a very sympathetic and embarrassed deputy manager.In short, this is the worst film I have ever had the misfortune of watching and would rather eat my own genitalia rather than have to watch it again.

"Ask a Policeman" was Will Hay's third best movie, full of wit and charm with three excellent lead actors. This remake is dreadful and it is a huge shame that it was directed by Val Guest, considering he role in making Hay such a star.Cannon and Ball - dear God, no! Just get "Ask a Policeman", or better still get "Oh, Mr Porter", "Bones of the River" and "Convict 99" and see how Val Guest and Will Hay combine to make masterpieces of British cinema.Pass this by - it is dreadful. Please, keep walking...no go on...nothing to see here...I am disgusted that anyone could give this a 10. I was going to score it 3 simply out of respect to Val Guest, but the fact that people are scoring it 10 - rating it as highly as Citizen Kane, The Godfather Part 2, Shawshank Redemption, African Queen etc is ridiculous. The acting from C&B is atrocious. The script is ludicrous - even the verbatim lines taken from Will Hay's classic seem ludicrous when C&B utter them, and it looks awful. I have to give it 1 to cancel out undeserved 10s.

The original version of this film (Will Hay's 'Ask A Policeman) was a classic. This, the remake, wern't as bad as some people said. Starring 80's comedy icons Cannon and Ball, the plot went that the two bungling policemen were in danger of losing their jobs because of the lack of crime in their little town of Little Bottom (pronounced Botham). Until some bad people start to steal a load of pricless paintings. The two start to investigate, even encountering a ufo along the way. I liked this film. I wish i could still get it. (I'm looking around for it but am unable to. If anyone knows where I can get a copy, type to this page, please!!! I will be in your debt!)

I remember going to see this as a kid and at the time (i was 11) I loved it. Having seen it again recently I'm sorry to say that I again loved it. I know it's a bad film but there's something about it (or that period) that fills me with nostalgia and I suppose makes me smile. Ask a Policeman is of course a classic and far superior, however I'm afraid i like them both.....sorry