From the days when "Artistic freedom" was more than just a meaningless phrase,"Are you being served" is deliciously low,grubby,cheap and very,very funny.It is of course a farce - a genre that is often attempted but seldom with as much success.First-rate comic actors do their familiar schtick,much-loved characters expand very satisfactorily to the big screen ,and,thirty years ago,moviegoers left the theatres with aching sides.How can that be a bad thing? Now we are living in a much more liberal society and are not allowed to laugh at anything that "They" don't think is funny and several po-faced Guardian readers appear to issue weekly dictats about what we watch on TV where sex of all persuasions is prevalent but we're not permitted to make jokes about it ,appalling violence is wrought 24/7 in our front rooms because it is "street" and we are "bourgeois" to complain about it,and language that would make a bargee blush is spouted by "stand up" comedians while their "sophisticated" audience, doubtless comprising of the rest of the readers of The Guardian,roll about in the aisles. Compared to all this,"are you being served" is,as those avatars of Englishness Mr Gilbert and Mr Sullivan once said,"a source of innocent merriment". Messrs Thornton,Inman,Bannister,mesdames Sugden and Richards,I salute you.In a world of fuel crises,Arthur Scargill,England failing to reach the World Cup finals and Scotland succeeding,the Sex Pistols and the Silver Jubilee.....you made me laugh like a drain.

The problems with this movie are many. First, there is no laugh track. Let's face it; half the comedy of watching Mr. Humphries come out of the lift dressed like a fairy prince is the audience howling with you. Now, even had the laugh track been present, it would be forced at best; it's simply not funny. Most of the one-liners and sight-gags are simply recycled from the episodes, but with inferior delivery and context. Next the plot suffers from being contrived, itself borrowed from 'Hurrah for the Holidays'. And the lighting and set pieces of Grace Brothers are unfamiliar and distracting.A very disappointing piece that should be skipped. You may wish to see anything and everything that is AYBS?, but are not missing anything by passing this one up.Editing this post after watching it another 10 times... it kind of grows on you I guess. I still give it an objective 2 stars for it's quality (or lack thereof) but for some weird reason we've watched it several times.

I watched this film last night on a free DVD given away with a national newspaper and i have to say my wife and i I ENJOYED IT! Yes,it has oodles of cheese and camp moments but it was fun.I love the funky,Are you being served? opening theme tune at the beginning and the movie feel picture quality.Yes,the script is dodgy but not as dodgy as the Costa Plonka in a studio with cheap sets and the pretty abrupt ending with young Mr Grace storming through the hotel wall in an armoured vehicle dressed like he has just stepped out of Dad's Army! I never really cared much for the series only having seen a few episodes so i wasn't affected by the repeat joke syndrome so i found the film really amusing.Menswear!

This is a film spin off to a sit-com more memorable for its characters at Grace Bros clothing store than its jokes: Mr Humphries ( A camp homosexual ) Ms Brahms ( A slutty single girl ) Mr Harman ( a sleazy janitor ) Mr Lucas ( A jack the lad ) Captain Peacock ( An uptight former military man ) and of course Mrs Slocombe where many of the jokes revolve around her losing her cat - " Has anyone seen my pussy ? " In short it's a comedy that relied on two dimensional characters and innuendo , British humour at its most basic and unsophisticated . It might have been funny at the time but it probably wouldn't raise too many smiles now As most people on this page have noticed this is a very poor film version of the TV series . The first third of the running time is taken up with the characters working at grace brothers clothing store then the action switches to the holiday resort of Costa Plonka and a plot involving a rebel leader about to stage a revolution , but this is secondary to things like a comedy of errors involving Mr Lucas sending a dirty note to Ms Brahms only for Mrs Slocombe to receive it thinking it's from Captain Peacock . This type of humour is very dated now and while Benny Hill might still remain funny , I can't say I laughed much watching this