Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

michelleeb The good parts - Peter Cushing, who cannot go wrong, and adds some much needed gravitas to the modern parts.The WW1 cast - perfect in every way.When the story is in WW1 - The English soldiers coolly wandering into a courtyard full of Germans is one of my favourites scenes.The scene with the sonic weapon - just believable (given Tesla's experiments) and nicely gruesome. Alex Hyde White isn't too bad once the story gets going.The bad The whole time travel. OK, I can see it working - but it doesn't here. It's just an excuse to modernise and Americanise the film, because god forbid an 80's audience try and deal with the story of British people in the past.Calling it Biggles - he's barely in it. Not enough to justify being the title character.That soundtrack. That truly awful, grating, inappropriate soundtrack.Marcus Gilbert - the one anomaly in the WW1 cast - he's awful.The modern American cast with the exception of Alex Hyde White - grating, irritating and stereotyped in every way.I think, on some level, the original writers and director did want to make a proper Biggles movie - the standard of the WW1 part shows that. I suspect they were over-ruled by producers and studio hacks who couldn't understand why anyone would want to watch just a straight forward story about brave British flyers in WW1. (The films penultimate line 'You're not a god, you're an American!' hints at some bitterness)Pity. There could have been a good film there.

ShadeGrenade Cards on the table time - I have not read the 'Biggles' books by Captain W.E. Johns. I remember seeing them on sale in the children's book department of W.H. Smiths back in the 1970's, but never plucked up the courage to actually buy one. I was more into the 'Nick Carter - Killmaster' novels. I assumed the 'Biggles' books to be jingoistic relics from the days when England was alleged to have ruled the waves ( and skies ), the sort of stories Grandad read as a boy. But that was then. Around the end of the decade, a feature film was mooted, starring John Cleese in the title role. Though it would have been interesting seeing the star of one flying circus in yet another, it never happened. Dudley Moore's name next came up in connection with the project. Fine if they wanted to send up the character, but not for an allegedly straight adaptation. Appearing on Granada's 'Clapperboard' to talk about the Robert Powell version of 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' ( which he had adapted ), writer Michael Robson stated that he was currently working on a screenplay for 'Biggles'. As he said it, he looked faintly embarrassed.The problem in bringing 'Biggles' to the Silver Screen was that the character ( indeed the genre ) had been sent up rotten over the years by, amongst other things, 'Monty Python', 'Ripping Yarns', and Russ Abbot. Just put a comedian in a World War One flying suit ( with goggles ) give him a handlebar moustache, make him talk thus: "Wizard Prang! What larks! Shot down two Fokkers over the Channel. One did a belly flop over the teddy bear!" and the audience would be certain to die laughing.In 1986, a 'Biggles' movie finally appeared. The writers decided to bring in a sci-fi element in an effort to grab some of the 'Back To The Future' audience. It starts in the then-present day with Jim Ferguson, an ad man based in New York, who is being stalked by a mysterious Englishman, Colonel Raymond, played by the great Peter Cushing ( in what turned out to be his last role ).Ferguson keeps jumping back in time for no apparent reason, to 1917, where he meets flying ace James Bigglesworth, or 'Biggles' for short. Biggles has discovered that the Germans have invented a new sonic device capable of mass destruction.So back and forth goes poor old Jim. One minute he's in N.Y. extolling the virtues of T.V. dinners, the next up to his neck in blood and mud in W.W.1 France, working alongside Biggles, who apparently is his 'time twin'. In one amusing scene, Jim dresses as a W.W.1 soldier and waits in his hotel room to be blasted back to Biggles' side, but it never happens. A cleaner finds him the next morning and laughs at him.Neil Dickson is not on screen enough of the time to warrant his top billing, which is a pity as he's terrific in the role of 'Biggles'. Most of the film is devoted to Alex Hyde-White ( son of Wilfrid ) as 'Jim'. He's okay, but I wish that the focus of the story was more on the title character. The action scenes, while not as good as those of say 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark', are nevertheless exciting. One particularly good moment has a helicopter containing Biggles and Jim winding up in 1917, where it comes in handy against the Germans. There's also a very emotional scene in 1986 where elderly Colonel Raymond is reunited with Biggles, the latter not having aged a day since they last met. Overall this is an enjoyable romp, but it is a shame that its makers did not have the confidence to make this a real 'Biggles' movie, instead of trying to shoehorn him into a daft sci-fi story. Ironically, the 1917 scenes have dated far less badly than the 1980's stuff. The rock soundtrack was another mistake.The director was John Hough, whose other credits include 'The Legend Of Hell House' and the Hammer movie 'Twins Of Evil', as well as episodes of 'The Avengers' television series. 'Biggles' was dumped on by critics and ignored by the public when it came out, but now seems quite charming. Interestingly, around the time of its release, I spotted a young boy coming out of a library with a heavy looking book - an omnibus edition of 'Biggles'. If the film, for all its faults, inspired someone to seek out and read the original stories then it could not have been a waste of time after all. I may give them a go myself one day.

benkidlington I like this movie, having just seen it for the first time, and I have never read the original Biggles books. But, it's clear even to me that the film hasn't attempted to stay true to the original stories.Nethertheless I found great entertainment value in this movie, which is simply to be enjoyed in a rather light hearted way it seems.No doubt this time-travel based production was slip-streaming behind the great success of Back to the Future, and it's a real roller-coaster ride and a fantastic culture clash between the 1980's and WWI eras. Any such movie released back in the mid-eighties should have done well at the box office, at least on paper.This film really is so eighties though, from the synthesiser-heavy intro music, down to the "punk scene", and the strikingly bleak grayish hotel lobby and eighties typefaces, that even people like myself who grew up in the eighties will probably feel more at home in what seems like the more "normal" WWI scenes.Was the eighties really that potently eighties? Obviously, it was, but it didn't seem like that at the time of course.So for me, this film has been a trip back in time to the eighties, and it fits in so well with a great sequence of other really enjoyable films I watched back then in my teenage years. I can't believe I somehow didn't see it at the time, but I'm really glad to have seen it at last in 2007.The aircraft scenes were highly enjoyable, and it's always good to see Peter Cushing too.7/10 from me.

Mike Hackney (alaskan_scout) I've read a lot of the reviews on here and there are some really negatives views of the filmOK so it is a bit tosh, cheesy, the music clashes and the storyline is a bit naff! i mean can a helicopters loudspeaker destroy a massive satellite dish?!?! but not taking anything away from a great film which i thought was thoroughly enjoyable! The music, if somewhat out of place is really catchy. especially the "do u wanna be a hero" song, the action is OK! i like the part when he's firing the machine gun at the Germans in the war, then zooms back to modern day and is shooting at the police! classic!Very enjoyable film i must say