Movie review - "Three Men in a Boat" (1957) **1/2

Romulus Films' attempt to make a success in the vein of those Rank comedies of the 1950s - you expect to see Dirk Bogarde, Donald Sinden and Kenneth Moore plus Kay Kendall and Dinah Sheridan. Instead we have Laurence Harvey, Jimmy Edwards and Donald Tomlinson as the three friends who decide to take a two week holiday to get away from it all by boating down the river - The Hangover, ye olde English style. One of the characters refers to it being the twentieth century but it feels like the 1880s - characters with boaters and striped jackets. The women they run into include Shirley Eaton, Lisa Gastoni and Jill Ireland who are very pretty and full of spirits. There are also some inevitable stuffy old men and women.

The book on which this is based is apparently a classic. The plot is a series of episodes: falling in the river, flirting with girls, getting lost in a maze, going skinny dipping and scandalising some biddies, taking part in a cricket match and wrecking it, crashing a party, etc.

Jimmy Edwards' moustache got on my nerves and he felt too old; Tomlinson is good value as the married man who does some outrageous flirting; Harvey didn't feel right - Kenneth More or Dirk Bogarde would have been much better. And too often the piece feels forced and contrived when it should be effortless. Still, it is what is.