I remember, as a child, sitting down with my parents to watch films like Without A Clue (a brilliant comedy take on Sherlock Holmes) and Peter Sellers wonderful Clouseu in the Pink Panther films. Or we d watch Terry Thomas in The Great Race and Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines on a Sunday afternoon. They were genuinely entertaining lightweight films for the entire family, which seems to be a genre that has all but died out in recent times.
I, like many others, loved the Harry Potter films (and the books, come to think of it), but they are unashamedly films made for children. They appeal to the child that is still inside all of us grown adults, but they are essentially made with children to appeal to children. The same can be said for The Chronicles of Narnia .
I am not trying to be disparaging of those films in any way - they are enjoyable to watch, after all, but I do think that, save for Pirates Of The Carribean , we are missing out on a fairly major sector of the market. Pirates aside, Lord Of The Rings would be too scary for young kids to watch or understand in any real depth (as would some parts of Pirates, to be honest), we haven t had an Indiana Jones film in over ten years and there seems to be no end in sight to the drought of such films. If you look at the films of the last year or so, we have had Eragon (awful, but still a kiddy film, really), Night At The Museum (childrens film), Pirates of The Carribean 2 (bit scary for younger kids, but getting close to the mark), a raft of childrens films and, I suppose, Superman Returns (which young kids won t really understand, as it homages the old film so much).
Other than that, it s really left to the likes of X-Men 3 to try and offer a family film, but most parents are not going to know who the hell Wolverine is, if we are honest. I guess it is true that there are no new ideas in Hollywood - we have had an abysmal remake of The Pink Panther with Steve I was funny once, but it all went wrong in about 1985 Martin, remakes of Herbie , The Dukes of Hazzard (again, no-one under the age of about 25 will remember that TV show) and god knows what else. Not to mention the obligatory summer sequels.
Where is the new Terry Thomas, I ask you? I know that there is a desire to make things cool and that a gentle ensemble comedy with a bit of romance for the mums and action for the dads is probably not en vogue, but it must be cheaper than making a CGI-fuelled film like X-Men ? Perhaps it is because the US studios think only in terms of whizz-bang-whoosh and the UK film industry has disappeared up its own fundament.
When I think about it, the masters of the family film were people like Ealing and Pinewood Studios - take a smattering of farce, add a squeaky clean hero and a villanous cad (who usually had an Eton accent) and add whatever setting you like. Motor-racing led to Genevieve , Monte Carlo Or Bust and The Great Race (and, to some extent Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines ). You want a medical setting?
No problem, try Doctor In The House . The point is that the films didn t have to cost a fortune to make and have lasted something like half a century without the humor losing its effect. Personally, I would give up ten Eragon films to get just one good old-fashioned family film made.
Unfortunately, British film comedy seems to be trying to emulate Sean Of The Dead all the time and if you let the Americans try, you end up with that godawful film Rat Race . Maybe I should buy a Ouija board, channel the spirits of Terry Thomas, Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice and see if we can t come up with a decent script. Fill the cast with people like Bill Bailey, Eddie Izzard, Rik Mayall and Dawn French and see if we can t recreate some of that old magic.
All that s left is to decide on the setting...
I remember, as a child, sitting down with my parents to watch films like Without A Clue (a brilliant comedy take on Sherlock Holmes) and Peter Sellers wonderful Clouseu in the Pink Panther films.
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