Reviews

The film starts by introducing us to a Multi-culti tribe in Switzerland (?) led by a shaman eskimo woman. They seemed to have forgotten that prehistoric hunter gatherers generally wandered around and fill instead their days by waiting all year in their village for mammoths to meander by and kill one for food which luckily lasts all year.

Their 'noble' existence is shattered by some Arab horsemen looking for slaves. They leave the Alps into the jungles (!) of Italy(?) where they are attacked by birds which once lived in South America. The scenery changes to Utah as they track the slavers into Africa. They meet some Zulu tribes who happened to have bumped into the Swiss hunter's father and who somehow managed to teach the Zulu tribe the one language that seems to exist in Europe.

The Arab desert slavers have attacked the zulus too so the Swiss and the zulus combine forces to attack the slavers. Rather than follow the river (the Nile?) to the slave town, they decide to cross the Sahara (after all there's no food or water by a river so this would seem a sensible option!).

After wandering around for weeks they look to the stars and decide to follow the North Star (the slave city, in common with Santa's hideaway is under it apparently). Hey ho, after a few days they find slave city and it turns out to be a pyramid construction site led by an alien. Luckily, the crafty alien god has lots of slaves and a ready source of desert living woolly mammoths to help build his pyramid. Swiss hunter cries 'operation desert freedom' and the slaves rebel.

The alien god's Indian eunuchs (fresh out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)and some albino africans flee to a giant ship stored in a pyramid but the rebelling slaves catch them up and kill the giant alien who turns out to be 'Lurch' from the Adams family.

Eskimo woman then dies back in the Alps to bring Swiss hunters girlfriend back to life in the Sahara (she's prophetic as shes got blue eyes - apparently rare we're led to believe in Switzerland).

The film ends with the desert dwelling Zulus giving the Swiss crops which somehow grew in the Sahara. The Swiss then set off home surely cursing that they set Lurch's giant boat alight as it surely would have speeded up their journey across the Mediterranean. They have a group hug back in the Alps when their desert crops begin to grow at the foot of a glacier...

Needless to say I won't be buying the DVD

Given that I'm gay, from Yorkshire, and did Oxbridge you'd have thought this film would have blown me away. Sadly it didn't.

For a start, there were too many inaccuracies and things that just made no sense 1 It was set in Yorkshire in 1983. Why did no-one except Posner have a Yorkshire accent?? 2 Why were they applying for Oxbridge after their A-level results. Normally the system is that you apply through UCAS at least one year before you get your final A-Level results. I undertook Oxbridge lessons whilst still at school in the subjects I was going to be sitting Oxbridge exams in. They started off doing History but then branched off into French, Art, politics...I just didn't get why. 3. Why had they not considered Oxbridge (or even university in general!) , until results day? 4. What was so wrong with Durham, Manchester or Leeds? It depends on the course you want to do. I went to Durham because the course matched what I wanted to do in Languages (which wasn't offered at Oxbridge), so why did the school want to send everyone to Oxford without even considering other unis (or even Cambridge!) 5. What would the lads have done for a whole year after presumably getting into Oxford in late autumn...wait around for a whole year til courses started again in September? 6. Why does Irwin live in Horsforth (nw of Leeds) when the school is in Sheffield?? 7 If they only have a month to cram, why do they waste a whole day on a pointless field trip to Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire? 8. If it is so important for the boys to make Oxford, why does the Headmaster entrust their teaching to a probationary supply teacher. Oxbridge lessons are usually with heads of departments who have taught you previously and know your strengths/ weaknesses 9. Media Studies as an A-Level in 1983?? 10. The opening scene of a boy cycling to meet his friend at church looks at home in the 1950s but not the 190s. Overall, the film seems to transplant the 1950s into the 80s. 11. Again, if the headmaster thinks time is of the essence, why bother with PE? You don't even have to do that post 16, so would seem strange for him to suddenly insist on it when they're 18. 12. The discussion about the Holocaust and post-war Britain seemed out-of-place. At school (in late 80s Yorkshire) we were only allowed to study up to the second world war, as beyond was deemed too modern, and teachers were not allowed to teach beyond in case they gave it their own political slant. Sorry if this seems picky! It just felt overall that Bennett wanted to give his impression of how he wanted his class at school to be. Themes that he could have really developed - what is history, does the education system develop thinkers or people who can just recall facts, is the education system biased to southern grammar schools, weren't explored. There is also no way that an 80s grammar school in Yorkshire would have been so gay. Perhaps in Bennett's mind, but not in reality. Does Bennett really think that Hector groping all and sundry on his bike would have been laughed off by everyone except the lollypop lady? Why would Dakin have offered Irwin a bj (on a Sunday afternoon)? When teenage lads put on a leather jacket, and say they want sex, it generally means here and now, not Sunday next, and almost never with their male teacher! These fantasies of Bennett played out in film I think have given Yorkshire a bad name abroad, and it is unfortunate that American viewers have come away with the impression that our schools are full of paedophile teachers. The gay theme would have been far more realistic and appealing if it had been played out between Posner and Dakin.

Overall, a potentially interesting story has been spoilt.