Holiday on the Buses (1973)

i must have seen a different film!!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Sacked by the bus company, Stan and Jack get jobs as drivers at a holiday camp and arrange for the rest of the family to come and stay. Blakey is there as a security guard and manages to get involved with the camp's nurse. The Butlers head for one disaster after another as Jack and Stan, take two girls for a bus trip on the sands only for the bus to sink in as the tide approaches. Olive gets into bed with someone else's husband when she makes it back to the wrong chalet in the dark and Baby Arthur sprays the chalet with ink, requiring a re-painting job........70's hilarity ensues...In the seventies it was the norm for studios to make motion pictures of very successful T.V comedies. Think of any, and I'm sure the show had a cinema release.The only difference was that they always ended up on holiday, and thanks to the Carry On... series, added a little more smut and innuendo to the proceedings, normally a woman losing her top.It's a very sexist film, all female characters here are either portrayed as objects of desire, or have no common sense at all. But it was the seventies, and it was the height of hilarity.I could imagine a traditional husband and wife back in the seventies watching this saying to each other... 'She's just like you love, stupid'......'Oh love it's true, we know nothing, I'll finish the washing up, make your lunch, and get your clothes out for tomorrow after I've seen this........Do you want another Stout''Shhhh love, I can't hear Bob Grant's derogatory comment to that stupid woman'And this is literally the rest of the film. The two lads get up to some silly antics with lots of women, Blakey gets frustrated and gets caught in a compromising position by Henry Mcgee, the bloke from Benny Hill, and the Sugar Puffs advert.But this was accepted for almost two decades after this on British T.V. Aside from Girls On Top and French And Saunders, sitcoms were just a family where the man was tearing his hair out because of his family, or was working for some business man and instantly had a crush on his daughter.But we watched them, and we enjoyed them. Don't feel guilty for doing so. I knew exactly what I was expecting when I switched this on. But this time, I wasn't laughing with Stan and jack, I was laughing about the audacity they had back then, and how they would cope in these times.This should be used for Social Studies in the future, to let the next generation know what our parents thought was quality comedy.It's not terrible by any means, It's just embarrassingly funny, for all the wrong reasons...

Its a 1970's British comedy - what you get is a slice of comedy history, typical of its time and place, nothing more nothing less. A bit of slapstick, plenty of innuendo, very loose plot line and full of sexism, ageism and any other -ism going around at the time. Quite simply it is Britain of the 1970's tied up in a 90 minute package. And if you are of a certain age it certainly brings a smile of nostalgia and sometimes incredulous horror. There are not many belly laughs but that's because comedy today is far more sophisticated and we like all our cinema highly polished.Enjoy it for what it is - don't put too much onto it. After all it's not meant to be a cinema classic just a bit of a laugh.

I guess this third 'on the buses' movie is a typical case of you either love this movie or you totally hate it. The humor is typical British, far from subtle, very sexist and incredibly simple and predictable. If you're into this sort of early '70's British humor, this movie will be a simple pleasure to watch. Everyone else is probably better off avoiding this movie.I for one found the humor enjoyable but really, it really is purely a matter of taste, more than anything else. To me it the humor is comedy in its purest form, from the early decades of the 20th century, when film was a new medium, only set in a '70's time-frame. The situations are all very simple and predictable. Everything that can go wrong goes wrong. The story is non-present, or at least not the most important element of the movie. This is comedy in its most simple and perhaps also purest form. But no, that of course does not guarantee a good movie as well. "Holiday on the Buses" its simple humor certainly entertained me and kept sure that I was enjoying the movie but with my brains switched off, obviously.This movie really doesn't have the most subtle or well thought out humor in it. The movie has a very overly present sexist undertone, in which all the woman are basically portrayed as lust-objects. The sort of Benny Hill kind of humor. All of the moments are also terribly simple and predictable but yet you still laugh at them since it simply is too ridicules and over-the-top all to not to do so.Still "Holiday on the Buses" still work completely successful as a comedy since it lacks one important fundamental thing; Good main characters. The main characters in this movie are dirty, not so good looking old men. How are we supposed to like or feel for any of them or even sympathize for them? Because of this, the movie often falls flat as a comedy. It makes the movie its humor even more cruel and perhaps even offensive by todays standards. No way a movie like this could or would be made this present day.Only for the most hardened fans of British humor. Everyone else, just skip it.5/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Stan and Jack, are struggling for work after one too many accidents in and out of the depot. The pair manage to land a job on a Holiday park, only to find Blakey's there as the head of Security and is romantically involved with the Nurse (not a nice Thought, that) Stans invite's the family up for a holiday and everything that can go wrong does. Their clothes are ruined, their toilet explodes, little Arthur redecorates the Apartment, etc.For Fans of the On the buses Series, this is great fun, it keeps the original cast and is full of cheap innuendo and cheap laughs.8/10 for fans only