Churchill: The Hollywood Years – Background and Commentary

Origin: England

Churchill: The Hollywood Years was a production of the English film industry.

This movie is less how Americans remember the WWII and more how the English think Americans remember WWII. The jokes are also geared to a specific subset of the English that find Harry Enfield and testicle  jokes funny. That is not to say the movie is not going to make you laugh. However…

… you are only going to laugh at the historical inaccuracies. But that’s okay, those inaccuracies are mostly intentional. The movie seems to take place in 1939, which makes some jokes… questionable.

Winston Churchill

Christian Slater plays Churchill as a loud, brash uncouth American soldier, marine and sailor. He wear the different uniforms randomly throughout the film.

Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margarette

Neve Campbell plays the future Queen Of England, with a passable accent. In 1939 Elizabeth was 13, and in this movie is played as the love interest to Slater’s Churchill.

Jessica Oyelowo a little know English actress (best I could do was remember her as the Van Tassel maid the makes out with Palpatine) plays the younger Princess Margaret. In this setting she is a sexpot that chases Churschill’s friend Denzel Eisenhower (the Ike analogue). Margaret would have been 9. Think about that…

Now the sexpot joke isn’t entirely inaccurate, as an adult it was rumored that she slept with most of the English Isles male population. But, that was as an adult…

King George Vl

Harry Enfield plays George the VI was a bumbling, half drunk codger…

After seeing this past years Best Picture, and Best Actor, Enfield falls very short.

That’s Freddie…

Others

There are other that stand out in the cast but really only one is probably well know outside England. Rik Mayall, who you might know from the Young Ones

or Johnathan Creek

or more likely Drop Dead Fred.

Well, I’ve run out of time so the only thing left is to link over to the movie, as hopefully I’ll have the Twitter commentary uploaded as soon as I get it converted #Churchill…

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