Reviews

Modern viewers will find it hard to believe their eyes. Three children hitchhiking to London. Their parents, when they find out, look slightly worried, maybe. One of the children, aged about 5, steps in front of a vehicle to persuade ithe driver to stop. They get in a car driven by two men who it turns out are bank robbers. Then they end up on a military firing range, from where they are given a lift in an Army lorry then passed, by Army personnel no less, to a random lorry driver. The 5-year old wanders off. Thus was made after the Brady-Hindkey case. It is unbelievable in its attitude to what even in 1966 must have been real risks to unaccompanied children. Bizarre. Yet reviewers on this page are calling it 'charming', which is also bizarre.

I really enjoyed this,, ideal for a Sunday evening, striking the right balance between having a Pugh detail to be interesting and not too technical in terms of the science.

Other reviews have commented on the quality of the CGI. Firstly, the animation is not bad at all,t's pretty good, and secondly who would care if it was bad. It's.not some dumb superhero film. It's a presentation of science for a general Sunday evening audience relying heavily on illustrative animation and as such is really clear and well done.

Surely the whole point is to leave the audience better informed, not to make anyone think they're looking at real dinosaurs. Before it was halfway through I'd already learned interesting new things about dinosaurs and the planet as it was in the distant past.

Presentation-wise, Stephen Fry his usual engaging and amiable self, and asks the right questions.

For the benefit of those scrutinising other reviews for any 'veiled'' expressions of prejudice, I have no problem whatsoever with the colour-blind casting and woukd gladly see more of it in period pieces. But the comedy in this gets pretty broad at times and only very rarely do we get glimpses of the sharpness and sure-footrdness we should expect from Armando Iannucci. Part of the problem might be that Iannucci and the cast are excellent at 21st century comedy of awkwardness and interaction and the source piece doesn't give them a lot to work with in that respect. It seems caught between respect for Dickens and wanting to actually be funny.

At first glance when this came on TV I thought 'Ivor Novello, meh, probably some cheesy songs and dated, creaky humour'. But how wrong I was. The fast-paced dialogue and frenetic plotting are imbued with a casual but knowing wit that gives the piece an amazingly modern feel for a film made in 1933. Novello himself is the big surprise, there's real panache in the way he drives it all along from within his character's louche, offhand manner. The rest of the cast are well up for it, conveying the chaos caused by Novello's superficial and fickle (though fatally charismatic) character - an exotic stranger who quietly invades the suburban family home in which he becomes a temporary guest, heedless of the trail of disruption he leaves in his wake.

The word 'uneven,' was never so appropriate. An excellent performance from Adam Faith and some good earthy dialogue, very real for the time, alongside some wooden delivery from others in places with all the clunky cliches of the rock bio. One odd thing thing is that relatively recent low-budget British films such as Teslstar and several others have created a 60s atmosphere and appearance so much better than was achieved for this film, made in 1974. I saw it on its original release and we noticed the jarring period-inappropriate extras and other stuff even then.

The film gets better though as it goes on, everyone seems more comfortable showing 70s people in 70s settings and the main character's gradual dislodgement from reality is well handled.

I was surprised in a positive way. In judging a 60s British pop film it's only fair to look beyond the Beatles at the wider canon and it contains some proper turkeys, stiff, cliched and beyond banal. Occasionally though filmmakers at least tried to be interesting and off-the-wall and this is one of those occasions. It doesn't always work and it's a bit flat in places but it definitely has its moments. The segment with the proto-hippies (or evolving beatniks) is particularly fascinating as a snapshot of a cultural undercurrent entering the mainstream consciousness. As with all films part of its appeal is in what, even unwittingly, the film shows us of the period in which it was made. As other reviewers have noted in that respect there are some revealing shots of of some very bemused members of the public in what is presumably London, all grey and very unSwinging. So not great but well worth sitting through.

I'm only a few years younger than the protagonists and can remember the clothes (though I don't believe these people were really suedeheads) and the cars and the caffs etc. And for a bit of nostalgia and as a visual snapshot of life at the time, it's worth a watch. But the bottom line is that using non-professional actors to portray people just like themselves doesn't get us, necessarily, anywhere nearer naturalistic realism than the smarmiest of drama school brats would. So it proves. It's mostly dreadfully wooden, all muttered lines, rigid stances and strange pauses, to the extent that the plot, basic though it is, is difficult to follow.In fact some passages are downright mystifying in that respect. It gets a bit better as it goes on but whichever critic called this a 'masterpiece' is just being silly.

Not really watchable as entertainment but fairly revealing if we're looking for insight into the varying mindsets of film makers of the time. Peter Rogers, whose company produced this, had put out Carru On Camping a couple of years before. That film had ended with a scene where a bunch of hippies were driven from a field by the film's main protagonists. In other words a victory for the sensible silent majority over the unwashed hordes threatening to corrupt society. It was part of a trend in the later Carry Ons where they became part of a kind of mainstream reactionary backlash against the 'counter culture'. In this film there is a 'protest demo' scene which continues this theme and tries to replicate the same type of battle in a more serious setting and besides being appallingly badly done it is unashamedly biased. Waving a banner about student grants , the protesters isolate a police officer and in cold blood surround him and badly beat him. Because of their grants, presumably. It makes those dreadful old political cartoons by Cummings in the Express look enlightened. Some interesting external shots though.