This is one of those musicals I watched thinking "gee this was probably a lot of fun to watch on stage" - with it's bright cheerful energetic star, Tommy Steele, and lively cast high kicking away and cheerful songs.
As a film it's less impressive. The director was George Sidney who stages scenes outdoors and all that - the production values are very high, with costumes and sets and what not. The support cast lacks star power - people like Julia Foster, Cyril Ritchard (didn't realise he was Australian), Elaine Taylor, Hilton Edwards... names who are vaguely familiar but who I didn't exactly recognise. Everyone is fine, they can act and sing and that, I just would've preferred another quasi-name or two.
The whole thing left me cold to be honest - but then I'm not a massive fan of these tales of plucky men who inherit money and pursue women. I'm not the target audience.
It's a long film. Bloated. This was immediately post Sound of Music and Paramount would have dreamt of similar financial returns - new British star, Broadway and West end hit, period family film. But it's so long - 140 minutes. I was thinking it was going to end and "intermission" came up. There is a fantastic number in the second half, "Flash Bang Wallop" - I think a few more of these and this would be a classic.
But the story is so slight and Kipps so passive. He's poor, loves Ann, inherits money, dumps Ann for Helen, realises he's shallow, then marries Ann. Really the film could and should have ended there - but he has greedy plans to build a mansion, loses money,gets back Ann, winds up with more money. So he realises "money makes you shallow" twice.
There's a lot of money - but I feel they'd have been better off cutting it down, spending the money on some name co stars for Steele - like, I don't know, Susannah York, Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave, Hayley Mills or something. Or a Hollywood star doing an accent.
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