The Highs and Lows of the new Dad's Army Trailer

The recent news that a film remake of the famous British comedy series Dad's Army was in the works sparked equal amounts of optimism and fear. TV series adapted to the big screen have had a long history of failures, with recent examples including Entourage and The Inbetweeners 2. Even more worrying is the fact that Dad's Army hasn't been touched for well over 40 years and makes it more likely that the new film may completely lose touch with the comedy of the original series.

The new trailer is filled with promising moments and some fairly excruciating parts too. The cast is impressive on paper, with Toby Jones and Michael Gambon very similar to the character's of the original. Gambon provided many of the high points of the 2 minute trailer, portraying the hapless Godfrey with near identical mannerisms to Arnold Ridley in the original. Jones is also one of the finest British actors at the moment and hopefully is given enough material to work one as Capt. Mainwaring.

More worrying is pretty much the rest of the cast. Bill Nighy, Tom Courtenay and Blake Harrison (known for the Inbetweeners) all seem to attempting to revive the bare bones of the original characters without any of the comedic substance. From the looks of the trailer, the plot revolving around the arrival of a female journalist (Catherine Zeta Jones') and fears of a German spy could also be very hit or miss. Oh, and that cow joke was just awful too.

This trailer has still left me very much on the fence and I am hoping that they don't just rely on throwing an excellent all-British cast in with a stale script and leaving it at that.