Jackboots on Whitehall

source: Jackboots on Whitehall

It may look like a team America knock off (actually maybe it is) but it is an utterly hilarious team America knock off! The idea of alternate history is brilliant. I won't spoil the jokes, but some of them had my insides aching from laughter. True there is some British humour that some people may not get, but the sheer ludicrousness of the film's premise is just inspired. The voice acting is really good, with a decent cast. We start off after Dunkirk, only the British Army has not escaped, and nobody is left to fight. London comes under attack and the English are forced north to Scotland with the help of a farmer from Kent, and the inhabitants of the village, Winston Churchill, an American, aaaand...I won't spoil the outcome, but needless to say, you will be very much amused if you aren't laughing your head off. Not as politically edgy as Team America or blatantly vulgar, but if you like British comedy, give it a go! I may be biased, but I completely loved it.

I can see what they were going for with this film, a knock-about pastiche of the Victor, done comically badly with tabletop dioramas and Action Men and Barbie style dolls - and right there was the first swing- and-a-miss. With the voice cast and budget, they could and should have licensed actual Action Man. And surely the distinctive looks of the British Sindy doll would have been more apropos than Barbie. So the stylistic tone was flat from the beginning, and then we get to the sheer woodenness of the (non) animation. Yes, I get that they're just moving dolls around, but there was no personality in the movement, nor expression in the faces. It was freakish and creepy and that jars with the comic tone that they were striving for. Rather than appearing deliberately and charmingly awful, it feels like this is the best that they could achieve, and shoddy work can only receive pity praise. On the comic tone, strive as they might, it mostly failed. There are a few, a very few, smile (or grimace) inducing lines, but no consistency either in writing or scripting, with scenes dribbling on to no good purpose or conclusion. The pacing is also erratic, and the editing lazy. I suspect that every second of footage ended up on screen. All in all a dire, disappointing mess that blows both the premise and the stellar cast on a dull, pointless exercise. The glaring obviousness of the shilling in the early reviews and review- ratings doesn't do it any favours either. This is not a film that can stand on its own merits, and instead needs to rely on the kind of propaganda and suppression of which Goebbels would have been proud.

After seeing the tag line on the trailer "Team America meets Inglourious Basterds", I was eager to see this. And it didn't disappoint. Well not too much. Some may bemoan the puppetry, you can see the rivets a mile away on the joints (imagine the elbow of an Action Man figure), but the non-stop action distracts you from this. It's funny too, delivering excellent caricatures of historical characters, as well as a huge amount of comical references to other films. However, the nature of a puppetry film is that a lot of hard work goes into it, and as a consequence, the length of the film cannot be too long. This film was so good, that I almost forgot at some parts that it wasn't a live action film. So when it ended, I was left wanting more. I felt as if not enough had happened, and was slightly disappointed. But not to worry, it's still worth a watch.

Stan Steel, i have no clue what film YOU were watching, but i for one thoroughly enjoyed this flick... Winston Churchill? As a puppet? Oh my, genius! This film can't get a 10/10 from me personally, i mean, it's no Schindler's list, or Titanic, it's not about to become an instant classic -- take it with a pinch of salt, what you get for your time is a hilarious take on WWII Britain, with a great cast of voice actors. I'm so glad this wasn't another hack at American humour. The film was well executed, admittedly the effects weren't Transformers style, but it just added to the humour of the film. Conclusion: an extremely cutesy British comedy... with puppets (:

I struggled to get through this rubbish, I found the racial stereotypes to be quite shocking, even with an " attempt" at humor you still need to keep good taste in mind, I must have missed something with this drivel, The portrayal of nationalities was far from humorous, I've got a pretty wide humor tolerance and for this to offend me prompting my first ever review may hint at my disdain, I'd have Ewan Macgregors headexamined for taking this role, the same with the other voice actors, That said the puppets and the way the stop motion was done was good but not good enough to cover up the overall shambles this attempt was, I'm annoyed enough to contemplate reporting it for the way it portrays the Scots, English and Indian people in it, and it making one person feel that way pretty much makes a case, A turd of a film.

Maybe it's because I grew up on Supermarionation but I loved this! The references to war films - and their clichés, they come thick and fast. Trying to guess who voiced which character. It also for me referenced British children's comics from the 70s, for e.g. Commando for the boys and Bunty for the girls. The animation was bad enough to be inspired. The individual characterisations made me think of the old Margaret Rutherford films. The young are all beautifully bland and everyone over 40 is a grotesque. If you want a film that evokes wet Saturday afternoons sat on the hearth rug in front of a black and white TV clutching your comic, this is it. It could have only been improved if Al Murray had been the village pub landlord!

My god this film is bad, saw it last weekend.. The production value and quality of the film seems to be of questionable standards, this could be due to the low budget or just bad direction, the visual effects techniques that was used are in fact just action men on sticks and has about the same ground breaking impact on visual effects techniques as as a rather small wooden trowel has on a plant pot, the action men adverts back in the 1970s had better effects and better directed than this poor production, id rather spend an hour trying to poke my eyes out with a rusty spoon than expose them to this drivel again enough said .. see it at your own boredom.

This film is a stop motion animation about a farmer's crucial role in helping Britain to defeat the Nazi Germans in the Second World War. "Jackboots on Whitehall" is a comical rewrite of the British history. It has many R rated stuff, such as gory scenes and politically incorrect jokes. The jokes are at times offensive, but they are so funny that will make you laugh. Notice the map of Britain in the film, it is quite funny! The character designs are good, you can clearly see the difference between the British and the Germans. And the female characters are all so attractive! "Jackboots on Whitehall" is not for everyone. If you are in the mood for something different, you might want to watch this one.

This movie is NOT for people whose idea of humor is "South Park." It's more for people who enjoy "Little Britain" or "League of Gentlemen." I laughed all the way through, not only because of the jokes (some of which appear to be far too subtle for most of the reviewers here), but because of the audacious premise of using what appear to be Barbies and GI Joes to "act" in a WW2 film. If you don't know the Ealing comedies, or British war films, or history for that matter, you will probably scratch your head at this film. But if you enjoy the quirky, or you were ever a little boy who made war SFX while playing with toy soldiers, you just might enjoy it. The voice cast features some of the finest British actors. This is NOT a movie for kids, as there is a fair amount of "language" (mostly from an insane vicar played by Richard E. Grant), some brief sexual humor, and some graphic, bloody violence (which nevertheless is very funny since it involves the dismemberment of plastic action figures). Enjoy this weird spoof of war movie clichés, and don't complain about the quality of the puppets. If you do, you're completely missing the point.