What would you get if you crossed “Are You Being Served” with “Benidorm” and “Fawlty Towers,” and threw in some “If It’s Tuesday This Must Be Belgium,” “The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob,” and “Bananas”? No I am not delirious. This was an actual 1977 movie, wherein the Grace Brothers staff vacations in the part of Spain where Benidorm is located. The original cast, so Mr. Lucas and even Mr. Granger are accounted for.
The movie starts in a weird, cinematic, warped as if in a dream version of the usual Grace Brothers set. It looks way too much like an actual department store. All of this is soon dealt with, however: because reasons, the whole staff is being flown on vacation to various locales, with our pals from menswear and ladieswear heading for the “Costa Plonka” (get it?) in Spain. Mr. Grainger has his first-ever experience of air travel. Captain Peacock and (as usual) Mr. Lucas are both hoping to get somewhere with Miss Brahms, but in a weird twist, Mrs. Slocombe repeatedly hits on Captain Peacock. Yuck! You could do better, Mrs. Slocombe!
Something is off about the hair and makeup. It’s too… good. I feel like The Major, complaining on “Gourmet Night” that the soup tastes off, only for Basil to clarify that it was made with fresh mushrooms.
Speaking of “Fawlty Towers,” the usuals arrive at their hotel and the manager, Carlos, is played by Andrew Sachs aka Manuel. Sachs was British, not Spanish, but here, halfway between “Fawlty Towers’s” two seasons (1975 and 1979) he reprises the role of Spanish waiter. Except he isn’t Manuel. He’s in charge of a hotel (as versus just pretending to be, while Basil’s away), and he’s meant to be… sexy? Is he Manuel, or is he… Mateo from Benidorm, Latin lover of exotically pasty English ladies?
A Jews-and-whiteness interlude, because why not: I take it British-Jewish or part-Jewish was 1970s British comedy casting for Spanish, given both Manuel-Carlos and the character here of Conchita, played by an obscure-seeming actress named Karan David. This is probably its own dissertation (free title idea: No One Expects The Spanish Appropriation), but for now I will just say that the only background I’ve ever (inadvertently!) passed as is Portuguese (in Toronto), so I guess this adds up.
Because this is totally the world of “Benidorm,” even if 1977 would have been before that type of all-inclusive resort existed as such (I think; I can barely remember having been outside of Toronto). Even if there weren’t the explicit tie-ins (Derren Litten being behind the 2016 reboot, Wendy “Miss Brahms” Richard having a “Benidorm” cameo), it’s the same realm of working-class Brits enjoying fun in the sun, getting a bit frisky in the heat, and searching for British food.
Things drag on a bit near the end, as two subplots each go on for far too long, which is to say, happen at all: First, a series of misunderstandings has everyone thinking they’ve received a hookup invite from someone other than they really have, and then winding up in the wrong tents. (Why tents rather than hotel rooms, in a seemingly upscale-ish hotel? Because.) It is painstakingly established that Mrs. Slocombe is old and desperate, Miss Brahms young and gorgeous. There’s also a very pre-#MeToo approach to ‘seduction,’ aka some of the attempted liaisons are not misunderstandings so much as planned or attempted (but fairly PG) violations of consent. All of this, or some of it, might have worked as farce, but not so much.
Then there’s the ‘climax’ of seemingly South American communist revolutionaries—a blurring of Latinness not to be repeated until the confusion over Hilaria Baldwin’s fake-Spanishness with cultural appropriation of non-white Latina-ness—shooting up the hotel. Why? It feels very of the time, but quite possibly of a different movie. I guess to make it feel more cinematic? I have no idea, but I wasn’t even born yet in 1977 so I was not consulted.
Some of the jokes (Mr. Lucas’s innuendo-filled comment about Mrs. Slocombe having been “flat on her back” during the war; a back-and-forth about how seafood is meant to “make you virile” followed up immediately by one about how the seafood in question consists of one mussel and a prawn), and another I’m forgetting, are straight out of the TV show, and I’m not quite detail-oriented enough to know which they appeared in first. Also near-repeated (or preempted?), early in the movie: the excruciating department store scene were Arab customers arrive and want to be fitted for Western clothes. How do you take the inside leg measurement of someone not wearing trousers? How indeed. (See also: a kilt scene from the original.)
And the eternal Mr. Humphries question: On holiday/on the big screen I guess they let him be openly gay. Gay, but also a full-fledged member of the LGBT community, mingling with transgender friends and everything. This is not the “mother’s boy” Mr. Humphries. This is the plans-to-sleep-with-a-matador Mr. Humphries. Good for him, even if no matador ever comes through.