Although it has its share of embarrassing moments when things go over the top, this Michael Caine comedy is a throwback to Ealing Studios days (with some dialogue Michael Balcon would never have condoned) and has more funny lines than most British comedies of the previous decade put together. The setting is Cascara, a tiny British island in the Caribbean (its features include Desolation Bay, Point Peril and Calamity Cove and it has no beaches) where the local industry is largely confined to the governor's (Caine) marijuana patch. The Brits, led by Leonard Rossiter as a ministerial buffoon under the lash of a superb impersonation of Margaret Thatcher by Maureen Lipman, decide to evacuate Cascara and turn it into the rubbish-tip of the Empire. Meanwhile an oil company has struck mineral water, exciting the local rebels led by Billy Connolly wielding a guitar. All it lacks are Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as the local drunks and cricket fans, but it does have Fulton Mackay as a wavering whisky priest who appears to have sired half the local population in 'moments of weakness'. Pretty crazy all round, but with some very good one-liners, including a scandalous put-down of Mahatma Gandhi by Lipman's Thatcher.

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