In a sentenceA soldiers’ newspaper with better jokes than its officers deserve
During wartime, soldiers produce a newspaper about the life they are living, making room for jokes amid military routine. Roberts (Ben Chaplin) and Pearson (Julian Rhind-Tutt) are at the centre of the story, with General Mitford (Michael Palin) among the officers around them. The paper gives the soldiers a way to answer the language and attitudes of military authority in their own words. Lieutenant Colonel Howfield (Ben Daniels) and Sergeant Harris (Steve Oram) also feature as the work of putting soldiers’ humour into print takes place alongside the war.
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Andy De Emmony’s soldiers’ newspaper comedy is warm, dry and worth an evening. Ben Chaplin and Michael Palin give it welcome ease, though the film’s affection for its characters makes wartime feel rather too tidy.
The Wipers Times is an engaging war comedy whose affection for its characters occasionally blunts its jokes. Andy De Emmony treats the soldiers’ newspaper as something worth taking seriously, without requiring the men producing it to behave solemnly. Making jokes under awful circumstances can be a useful activity, particularly when the alternative is listening to an officer. The film is less persuasive when it seems too pleased with everybody’s pluck.
Ian Hislop and Nick Newman understand the satisfaction of hearing an inflated military voice punctured. Their writing is strongest when the joke comes from the difference between an officer’s importance and what he actually has to say. We laughed at General Mitford’s exchange with the pompous officer, because Michael Palin makes the pomposity sound so unnecessary. The humour depends on the officer continuing to take himself seriously.
Ben Chaplin gives Roberts enough ease to stop the humour feeling like a demonstration of admirable courage. We can enjoy his company without being asked to applaud him for finding something funny. Julian Rhind-Tutt brings a welcome dryness to Pearson, and helps keep the writing from sounding too pleased with its own cleverness. Michael Palin is especially valuable because General Mitford need not be solemn to carry authority.
Mark Garrett’s cinematography keeps our attention on the people delivering those jokes, although the sense of danger is less convincing. Stephen O’Connell’s editing gives the exchanges time to settle, which is usually the right decision for this sort of dry comedy. Nick Green’s music encourages the warmth, sometimes rather too helpfully. Together, those choices make the film agreeable company, but they also make its wartime setting feel more manageable than the humour suggests it ought to be.
The reservation concerns the writing as much as the staging. The writers favour a reassuring distinction between people who can take a joke and people who cannot, and the latter are easy to dismiss. That makes for clean comic exchanges, but it also limits how far the film is prepared to trouble us. Andy De Emmony’s gentleness becomes a constraint whenever the jokes ought to leave something unpleasant behind.
A newspaper is a practical thing to make, and that matters here: someone has to turn a passing joke into something other people can read. The film respects that small piece of work, giving its humour a purpose beyond keeping a conversation going. Within war comedy, it belongs at the gentler end, finding much of its pleasure in the company these men offer one another. That modest ambition is worth defending, even when we wish the film would risk a little more unpleasantness.
At 92 minutes, it does not ask an unreasonable amount of time for these pleasures. The performances and the newspaper’s humour make it worth an evening for anyone who likes their war stories told with a dry voice. Go for the company, with some allowance for how neatly the discomfort is tidied away.
Ferguson finds the film thoroughly entertaining, touching and clever. He praises its gallows humour, especially the exchange between Michael Palin and a pompous officer.
Read the full review →The page identifies this as a review, but the critic’s verdict cannot be recovered from the available text. Its description notes the wartime soldiers’ newspaper as the drama’s subject, without revealing what the critic praised or faulted.
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The Life and Death of Colonel BlimpFor another warm, questioning look at the people inside military institutions.
Good Morning, VietnamAnother wartime entertainer discovers how quickly jokes become a matter of discipline.
Closely Observed TrainsOrdinary appetites and awkwardness persist through wartime in this dry Czech comedy.
Duck SoupMilitary self-importance receives far less gentle treatment, with a useful shortage of reverence.
The Death of StalinFor harsher laughter at frightened officials trying to preserve their authority.
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