The Tommy Steele Story was a big hit so Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy rushed out a second Steele film, casting him in a dual role as lookalikes - one an artistocrat who gets his look a like to impersonate him on a visit to a royal country.
There are worse ideas for a silly film - I mean, it's the basis of The Prisoner of Zenda and The Prince and the Pauper. But it meshes uneasily with the teen musical aspects of Steele. That exists in its own uneasy reality - that of a British pop/rock musical. To cross it with Prisoner of Zenda feels like a bridge too far.
There are some basic construction flaws - like there's not much difference between the two characters Steele plays, the aristocrat and the layabout. Really the aristocrat should be posh - they kind of make him this hard worker only interested in cows but also he's secretly married (we never meet the secret wife). But he's got no real personality.
And I didn't buy the basic set up - 1958 feels far far too late to have plots about arranged marriages.
There's a bewildering lack of culture clash comedy - it's basically just Tommy being bouncy and charming. And to be fair he is charming - with a big smile, full of energy, singing and dancing away. He's got the right stuff - more West End than pop star (and the tunes back this up) but he's talented. He has a sweet romance with the princess and really the film needed to give him more relationships on screen - there was no progression in his relationship with a manservant, for instance.
They throw in a plot about a possibility military coup but never do it. Never reunite the two Tommys. Don't expose the deception in a big way. So it's a lousy book.
But it has a solid support cast, some tunes and the star really giving it his all.
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