Reviews

Although "Fairly Secret Army" never got much attention, it was a delightful little series starring Geoffrey Palmer, with a challenging premise for a teleplay-writer in these modern times: Make an obscure, far-right, wonderfully stuffy retired British army major into a lovable, and even sympathetic and huggable, fellow. He tries to form a tiny army dedicated to – something or other. It's never clear what. Certainly not the overthrow of the British government -- that's the very thing they oppose.

The series, which only ran to about a dozen episodes, was a spin off from the much better-known "Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin," in which Palmer played Reggie's wonderfully stuffy and perpetually unprepared Army officer brother-in-law, Jimmy (Major James Gordonstoun Anderson). ("Would you have any food, Reggie? Been rather a cockup on the catering front.") Palmer's Major Harry Kitchener Wellington Truscott – different name but obviously an extension of the same character -- tries to raise a small and fairly secret army, but has to settle for one adoring upper-class lady, a popinjay sergeant and his wife, and a half-witted corporal (Richard Ridings).

The secret army is soon recruited by a shadowy man from government to infiltrate a revolutionary cell that seems to be as lethal as it is secretive. Good stuff.

". . .the Stalin regime, for all its flaws, was a popular regime with the Russian people with astounding achievements to its credit. . ." wrote a previous reviewer.

How true! And much the same could be said for the Hitler regime, which was also a popular one, and had many remarkable achievements to its credit as well.

"With all its flaws." Yes, there were some unpleasant moments under Stalin: The reign of terror, the show-trials, the midnight arrests of dissidents, the mass deportations, the calculated murder by starvation of at least 10 million people, and the slave-labor camps. In the movie, these matters would have interfered with the pacing, editing, and overall thrust of the message, so they ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Still, as long as it was popular with the people, or at least with those who survived it, that's what counts.

--Scrivener3000

I had looked forward to the series as coming from a master of the documentary form. After all, Burns set in motion several documentary devices that have been widely copied since, such as first-person voice-over narration and having the narrator sign off each spoken part with his or her name. The Civil War series was truly an achievement.

This thing, however--

It amounts to a chapters-long indictment of Europeans that verges on racism. It emerges after a while that the only good whites are dead whites. It's true that there was much brutality in white settlement of the west, and that horrible crimes were committed, usually unthinkingly, and many of them by whites. But is there really nothing more to the story than white-folks-bad/red-folks good? With a little effort, Ken Burns might have found, oh, I don't know, at least one good white person. Or, rather, one good white person who wasn't immediately tarred and feathered by his redneck fellows.

It's as if you were to tell the story of World War II and focus on nothing but the fact that the American armed forces were rigidly segregated at the time. Oh, wait, that one's probably Ken Burns' next.

To put it plainly, the dogs die in the film version, but live in the book version. But since the film comes from the book, this is more than taking a liberty with the plot, it's an unjustifiable story change.

The fact is that the film (and the book) could have ended either way, given the circumstances. There are enough variations in the real world for it to have ended either way; it's simply up to the author, and NOT up to the filmmaker, to choose which ending best suits.

The movie's ending is more "satisfying" than the book's? Fine: Let's have Frodo give up and turn the ring over to Sauron. Let's have Aragorn get killed at the Black Gate. Let's have Galadriel go, not into the west, but up to Bree, where she opens an ale-house.

It's true that Richard Adams' ending was contrived, a deus ex machina, and tended into embarrassing strangeness when he chose to write himself and a friend into the story, but it was a more satisfying ending than having the dogs die -- and no, I'm not just being sentimental. It also completed the circle between Snitter and his not-dead-after-all master.

Visually, the entire film suffers from being basically drawn in black and white, with color added, an approach that has never worked. On the other hand, the framing of the shots is excellent. The drawings are good at times, especially in the landscapes, not good at other times, especially in the dogs' faces (a pretty important thing to get wrong). It was clearly rotoscoped, which is always deadly for animation. The humans are surprisingly poorly done, probably because the artists didn't have the needed rotoscoping to work from.

The other problem is dishonesty. If you're going to appeal to our sense of outrage at the seemingly needless cruelty of experimentation on animals (and much of it is needless) then at least show the dogs also inflicting pain, death, and destruction on the sheep and chickens, rather than conducting their violent business out-of-frame.

With all these problems, a D-plus is the best I can give it.