Jackboots on Whitehall

What do you think of the lineup of this movie:

Ewan McGregor
Rosamund Pike
Timothy Spall
Alan Cumming
Dominic West
Tom Wilkinson
Richard E. Grant
Richard Griffiths
Stephen Merchant

Not too bad right? It's a satirical WW2 film with an alternate history where the Nazis have invaded London. Ewan McGregor plays a farmer who is the English equivalent of 4F because his hands are too large.

But wait, this is a stop motion animation film too, with male characters played by GI Joe style dolls and the few girls unfortunately all Barbies or Braatz. The males dolls though are all distinctively human looking and most have a lot of character but the girls are rather bland and undefined beyond the Barbie/Braatz image. (There's a matronly character too and she is more distinguishable from the rest, being an older lady.)  The film's humor is something like a Monty Python movie or what you would find on Comedy Channel's Adult Swim block of shows.


Although I know these actors, most of their voices are not immediately recognizable (some play German, French and American as well as a variety of English accents) so just by listening I can't tell who plays whom, other than Ewan as the main lead Chris and Rosamund Pike, basically the only female, as the love interest Daisy; she actually doesn't appear much beyond being a supportive female to the men in the cast--Chris, her father, her town.

McGregor's Chris is supposed to be the central character and eventual hero but I think there are just too many more campily portrayed characters so Chris' bland personality does not bring much focus to his story. Also the film overall is a good premise but needs to be stronger. Some vocal characterizations, especially that by Timothy Spall as Churchill and some cartoony Germans (Alan Cumming as Hitler--he also does Braveheart at the end of the film, Richard Griffith as Goering, Tom Wilkinson as Goebbels), Dominic West as a brash American and Sanjeev Bhaskar as a Punjabi soldier, are the better acted ones mostly because they get to act out a specific character through voice and action. Being a farmer or lovestruck girl is not very interesting.

While some sets are cheaply created, such as Big Ben or 10 Downing Street portrayed through cardboard cutouts of the real thing, it lends to the feel of dollplay. Despite having mouth movements, the dolls have no movements in their facial expression so this diminished the emotions of the characters.

It's an odd little novelty of a movie. It could certainly be played on TV on the aforementioned Comedy Central, or recreated as internet webisodes which would better reach the type of audience it is made for.