Gladiatress

Whilst I work on Kinda please enjoy this review of the movie Gladiatress that I wrote before starting this blog... a sort of Review from the Volt from the Vault so to speak.

A story of three sisters (played by Sally Phillips, Fiona Allen and Doon Mackichan, all from the Britich comedy sketch show Smack the Pony), a clumsy village outcast, Worthaboutapig and barbarian-like Smirgut the Fierce join forces to resuce man-hungry warrior princess Dwyfuc, who has been captured by the Romans. Encountering soothsayers, gladiators, barbarians and lawyers during the quest they then have to save the whole of Celtic Britain

A rushed script and production schedule mean that this film isn't really as funny as it wants or deserves to be but for me it certainly works well enough as a mildly updated Carry On style romp with gags and language that are a bit more coarse and vulgar but, all-in-all, using very similar humour throughout.

The language puns are present and correct as are the sight gags and there are character names that would have been at home in Carry On Cleo (based in the same era but made, amazingly, some 40 years before) - Worthaboutapig and Dwyfuc I can see being on the level of Senna Pod and Bilius for a modern audience... and I certainly reckon the writers stole Sid James' lustful growl to transpose into the female warrior princess of this film. This did make for an some uneven tone, with mid-60s style humour not always sitting so well alongside post-millennium coarser language (it's harder to make double entendres rudely funny when the 'rude' version is now in common daily usage) but on the whole I think they often got the balance about right.

With more time to polish the script and sort out the comic timing and flawed tempo of some scenes Gladiatress could have been a laugh-out-loud, really enjoyable film in the Carry On tradition for the Hot Fuzz generation but in reality, sadly, it's a watchable hour and a half with a few giggles... though that's still miles better than when they actually tried to update Carry On films with Columbus and, to be honest, a couple of the other weaker Carry Ons too!

The DVD (UK - Region 2 & 4):
The image is a television-like 1.78:1 anamorphic image, the sound is 5.1 Dolby Digital and there are English subtitles... simple but functional.

Any Australian-area readers of this blog might also be interested to know that, if they have trouble sourcing this disc locally, the UK release is encoded for Regions 2 and 4 (so is probably identical to the R4 release anyway, which is similarly encoded).

What is not mentioned on the cover is that there are also some extra features, namely some cast interviews and a 'Making of... ' featurette, so at least they've made a bit of an effort, even if they forgot to tell you!