A film like Three Men in a Boat doesn’t seem congruent with modern cinema. Some British films from the 1950s have aged really gracefully—A Kid for Two Farthings being one—but Ken Annakin’s slapstick comedy romp doesn’t quite hold up as well. There value here, for sure, but it’s not a film to those looking to expand their classic British film knowledge.
The film follows three disillusioned men all looking for some brief respite from their London lives. There’s Harris, under pressure to get married, Jay, disillusioned with married life, and George, constantly looking over his shoulder for an angry love rival. Their solution? To rent a canoe and spend a week sailing across the River Thames with their dog, getting up to plenty of hijinks along the way.
Hijinks is definitely the right word here, because the crux of Three Men in a Boat‘s plot revolves around the wacky mishaps the three men deal with throughout the film. There’s plenty of falling off the boat into water, making fools of themselves in public, and bumbling to complete the most menial of camping tasks. However, the film’s a whole lot funnier when the three are quipping at one another, rather than when director Ken Annakin relies on easy slapstick gags to get laughs.
Admittedly, there are enough scenes across the 90-minute runtime to keep you engaged, even when most of the slapstick gets tiresome quire early on. It’s often funniest when the jokes are inadvertently at our main characters’ expense, such as a particularly good juxtaposition between them setting up for the night in a sordid, soaking tent and a cosy London pub. Seeing them fool around as friends, bumbling their way through a triple date and ruining a posh regatta, is much more entertaining than seeing them slip and slide all over the place.
Most of the time, though, it feels like there isn’t quite enough narrative here to hook you in. Scenes towards the end particularly lose their momentum, with some gags going on for more than double the time they should – and you end up feeling every second. If there was just a bit more meat on the narrative bone, and some more propulsion behind the film’s events, the comedy wouldn’t feel so egregious.
That said, there’s something undeniably charming and rather innocent about Three Men in a Boat‘s silliness. It feels like the perfect precursor to classic British sitcoms like Only Fools and Horses, even if most of its comedy is far less complex in its structure. This new 4K restoration looks lovely too, with much richer colours that only wane during the fades between scenes.
Before watching the film, you’ll probably already know whether Three Men in a Boat is a film for you or not. If you don’t mind a bit of turn-your-brain-off humour, and want a suitably summery companion, it’ll more than suffice. However, the one-note nature of the comedy, and the relative thinness of its other elements, means you could be left wanting more.
★★
Three Men in a Boat will be released on Blu-Ray, DVD and on Digital on August 19.
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