Own the rights?
Most big-screen spin-offs of successful television sitcoms are hugely disappointing, and in some cases unbearable, so I approached this one with low expectations. In all fairness, it shouldn't really work. After all, Richard Beckinsale's Alan - the brilliantly naive medical student of the TV series - is a very sad loss (Beckinsale died young, and is still much missed over twenty years later), and he's been replaced with the charisma-free Christopher Strauli, as a too-old art student named John. Secondly, the script is cobbled together from several episodes (admittedly classic episodes) of the series, so even casual fans will get a hint of deja-vu. But in spite of these obvious flaws, RISING DAMP is consistently amusing and entertaining. Leonard Rossiter's excellent performance as the leering, sneering, tight-fisted landlord from hell is worth the admission price alone, and as an added bonus we get to see the old devil as Noel Coward and John Travolta in a couple of jaw-dropping fantasy sequences. Eric Chappell's screenplay would be glaringly politically incorrect these days (when Philip - supposedly an African prince - asks if he can watch the England vs the West Indies cricket match on Rigsby's television, Rigsby refuses, because it's a colour set and he doesn't want to waste the licence fee watching something that "looks the same in black and white"!) but it's all funny stuff and delivered with gusto by a great cast. In fact, Chappell pulls out all the stops to make us laugh and wince in equal measures - several old jokes (a bull mistaken for a cow, Rigsby's Eric Morecambe-style boxing shorts, Philip and John crashing through the ceiling into another tenant's bedroom, people hiding under beds and in wardrobes) are revived, Rossiter rattles through his extraordinary dialogue with stunning ease (and every word, however quickly delivered, is clear and distinct) and Frances De La Tour is even more hysterically over-the-top than usual as the ultra-frustrated spinster Miss Jones. Some previous reviewers have noted that we shouldn't have been told that Philip's pose was a carefully-contrived scam, but let's face it, that much was obvious from the start; and others have noted that Rigsby and his object of desire are "paired off", but they can't have been watching the ending very closely because...well, I'm not going to spoil things for you, but let's just say Vienna gets in the way again!Okay, so this isn't the TV series, but it's no screaming disaster either, and fans of the shows will find much to amuse them. RIP Rossiter and Beckinsale.
You may report errors and omissions on this page to the IMDb database managers. They will be examined and if approved will be included in a future update. Clicking the 'Update' button will take you through a step-by-step process.
