As her daughter Kitty (Kitty McShane) has decided to become a military
doctor, OId Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) decides to join the army as a
nurse, despite being completely unqualified ... which she has proven only
in her last job when she almost killed an important weapons developer,
Rayful (Bryan Powley), even though she wasn't the actual nurse called to
the job. Of course, the actual nurse, nurse Wilson (Jeanne Stuart), is
way worse, because she's an enemy agent, working together with Rayful's
doctor Leach (Garry Marsh) to get the secret of his latest development out
of him before he can hand it over to the army. Now after wreaking havoc
at the army nurses' camp, Old Mother Riley takes to sleepwalking, and
while doc Leach and nurse Wilson almost succeed to steal the blueprints of
the new weapon, she suddenly parades in and snags key info and key
evidence. When she later finds nurse Wilson go through her things, not
knowing where she's been last night even, Kitty and her boyfriend (Bruce
Seton) put two and two together while Old Mother Riley just makes a big
mess out of everything, but these two components put together bring down
the baddies anyways ... Truth to be told, the comedy of
man-in-drag Arthur Lucan as Old Mother Riley was never of a
very sophisticated quality, and it shows in this one, too, a film mainly
relying on simplistic slapstick, oneliners of a hit-or-miss quality, and
of course the occasional so-so sightgag. Sure, some jokes do work, some
oneliners are hilarious even, but the joke of the guy-in-drag wears off a
bit too quickly, the whole thing is rather badly written, lacking
structure and being rather on the random side, narratively, all the while
lacking narrative tension, and the direction is functional at best. Interesting
as a document of its time perhaps, but not really good.
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