The Boys in Blue (1982)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Sgt. Cannon and PC Ball run the police station in the quiet town of Little Botham. When the station is threatened with closure due to a lack of crime, they decide to invent some crimes to justify their existence. When they try to steal a painting from a local rich businessman, they accidentally stumble across a gang of real art thieves who have just stolen £1 million worth of paintings. It is up to the two Saturday night light entertainers that your grandad liked to stop them escaping with their haul.......The film is the Choc Ice of British cinema, cheap, barely tasteful, and leaves a horrible aftertaste, but you cannot help but watch for sheer nostalgia reasons.This could have easily been a Saturday evening variety programme, the two comedians based in a police station, being visited by a special guest every episode dressed as something nautical, or as the toe would say 'Naughty-cal'.It's not a very good film, but for pure nostalgia reasons, it entertains in a way that only people of a certain age would understand. Cannon and Ball were a staple in many families viewing in the eighties. They were funny, not at all crude, and everyone loved Bobby Ball because he was the silly one with all the catchphrases.So obviously a cinematic outing for the two was inevitable, as this was a time when TV shows and British comedians were getting big screen releases willy nilly.So the film is nothing more than the two dressed as policeman doing what they do on TV, with a little bit of the plot from 'Ask A Policemen' thrown in for good measure.Many will sniff at the films existence, but then there are a few people like myself who really don't mind watching crass, mindless humour for ninety minutes to forget about the real world.Rock on Tommy indeed.....

As a child I remember seeing Cannon and Ball on the TV every Saturday evening at the height of their popularity. I brought this DVD, although I had seen the film many years ago when I was little. Cannon and Ball star as two inept police officers of Little Botham, where there is little for them to do. Bobby has a supermarket ( built into the police station!) Eric Sykes is brilliant as the Chief constable, who is irritated within seconds of meeting the boys in blue.Valueable paintings are being stolen and the boys try to catch the criminals in order to avoid being merged with another police station. All in all a very enjoyable comedy

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.

This film is very funny and showed cannon and balls comic genius, 10/10. I think this should be re-released. There is some bad acting but the comic moments make up for it and bobby ball makes me laugh till i cry. I don't know how anyone who has seen this film could give it a bad comment.