Couples and Robbers (1981)

A young newlywed couple - “Morris” (Rik Mayall) and “Wendy” (Frances Law) leave their registry office wedding and are swiftly abandoned by their friends who all have other places to be. Reduced to walking home, they pass the home of a posh couple - “Walter” (Peter Eyre) and his toy boy “Julian” (Frank Grimes) who have a new Saab turbo parked outside. This latter pair are off to play tennis, but the younger of the two is a bit cavalier with the car keys so “Morris” decides they can borrow it for a day and head into the countryside. Next morning, though, they return the car and offer two tickets to the ballet as compensation. When the pair rather naively head to the theatre, they return to quite a few surprises and some utterly contrived home truths. None of this really adds up to much. It relies on some fairly dull stereotypes and even at it’s most natural, there just isn’t anything likeable about any of the four main characters. Is it supposed to spotlight the iniquities of society? Possibly, but it does it in such a crass fashion that isn’t funny or plausible whilst written as if it were taken straight from the “Janet and John” book of envious social commentary. We are led to assume lots about the wealthy couple but told nothing at all about the others until a conclusion that, again, seems to have an anti-establishment point to make - but just for the sake of being “on message” as Mrs. Thatcher’s Britain was starting to take shape. It’s far too long and really leaves us with little to get our teeth into. I found it all a bit lazy, sorry.