VINTAGE STUFF

Another farce by talented, erratic British satirist Sharpe (Wilt, The Great Pursuit), this time sliding from Wodehouse-ian silliness into rather message-y, heavyhanded black comedy. At Groxbourne, an athletics-minded, fifth-rate prep school, housemaster Glodstone is lavishly loathed by geography-master Slymne. And, after trying some garden-variety viciousness (sending Glodstone homosexual pornography, etc.), Slymne comes up with an elaborate scheme to make a fool of his enemy--who has a well-known Achilles' Heel. Glodstone, you see, is a throwback obsessed with derring-do fiction of the Buchan/Bulldog-Drummond school (""none of your filthy modern muck like Forever Amber""); he drives a 1927 Bentley, is politically somewhere to the right of Joseph Goebbels, and yearns for a noble Anglo-Saxon adventure. So Slymne sends Glodstone phony letters from La Comtesse de Montcon (mother of a Groxbourne student), begging for Glodstone's help in rescuing her from unnamed fiends. And off goes Glodstone to France, determined to save the Comtesse from her unspecified plight, accompanied by his guns, his Bentley, and his favorite student: Peregrine Clyde-Browne, a gung-ho lug ""with the moral discernment of a micro-processor and. . . an uncanny flair for misapplying logic."" Soon, then, this well-meaning duo is sneak-attacking the Comtesse's chateau, which is actually a hotel now occupied by a symposium on ""DÉtente or Destruction""; the raunchy Comtesse, nÉe Constance Sugg of Croydon, is the resident cook; predictable misunderstandings and brawls ensue--with fatal results. (Quick on the neanderthal trigger, Peregrine kills a top US political theorist and sexually mutilates the USSR delegate.) And, after trying desperately to call off his scheme, Slymne confesses to the higher-ups--who manage to pick up the pieces, hush up the scandal, and put Peregrine where he belongs. . . in the SAS, killing IRA men, poachers, and off-duty constables. (Glodstone, meanwhile, ends up married to the Comtesse.) Spottily amusing, often too obvious or nasty, without the light touch needed to carry the farfetched central-premise along.