[Inspector Abberline]

Mutiny on the Buses.


Stan's love life is the central focal point for this film as he tries to leave the nest and buy a house and gt married with one of the clippees,Susy (Janet Mahoney). Unfortunately for Stan his brother in law Arthur (Michael Robbins) has been made redundant,which leaves Stan the only bread winner in the family and unable to buy a flat.Stan's problems are even more compounded when the bus depot gets a new manager. Mutiny has a fairly thin plot,based mostly on the fact that Stan needs to raise some money to move out and get married,but every time he thinks he can get away something all ways goes horribly wrong and scuppers his plans on moving out. So we get a string of vignettes loosely based the fact that Stan is incompetent and Jack (Bob Grant) his conductor is even more useless,while also trying to outwit there nemesis Blakey (Stephen Lewis). Mean while back at the Butler house hold Olive (Anna Karen) has her hands full bring up little Arthur,who is constantly sitting on his potty,or in some cases his dads newly got busman's cap.Out of the three films this is the one that feels like it is just an extended episode of the television series,with one or two scenes taken directly from the television show.The main one being Olive getting jealous when Arthur starts chatting up a female conductor,and Olive getting more jealous by the minute.But the film starts to shift gear considerably in the right direction when the manager brings in a new route around the local safari,and Stan manages to blackmail the manager into giving him the job of driving to the Safari and earning more money and getting to wear a rather snazzy Roger Moore like safari uniform as the new driver for this job. It does not take much to make me smile,but nothing is guaranteed to get a grin on my face than seeing a chimpanzee trying to drive a bus,or wiggle his bottom in Stan's face.Of course it is all very childish stuff and its hard to believe that this was considered anything but low brow (nothing wrong with that) and makes your average Carry on film look like it was scripted by Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde.Still it has all the required ingredients,women in skimpy pants,monkeys and crushing a mini van.