SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

writers_reign For 1963 this musical seems dated. Rock and Roll arrived in the mid fifties but a musical with actual melodic melody and literate lyrics in 1963 was definitely a throw-back. To be fair it probably aspired to nothing more than giving the audience a painless dose of escapism so long as they didn't ask any awkward questions; for example in about the second reel the boys are in the bus on a road in France which is about three times as wide as any road in France that I've ever driven on, clearly shot on the back-lot at Elstree. When they meet the girls who are in a clapped-out car there is a sequence lasting a good ten minutes in which they try to persuade the girls to ride with them which includes a song/dance. During ALL THIS TIME the road is completely EMPTY: No pedestrians, no bicycles, no cars, no vans, no trucks, no lorries, no buses, no coaches. Nothing. In the middle of the day yet. If you can live with this and don't object to the central plot point - a wealthy girl on the run from a controlling parent - being lifted straight out of It Happened One Night, then you may well enjoy this.

Jackson Booth-Millard Everyone must know the popular song, well this is the film where it came from. Basically four London Bus mechanics have made a deal with their superiors to a bus around Europe. They go through France, Yugoslavia and Greece throughout, there is a tiny bit of love story, and everyone is singing on the journey. That's about it. Cliff Richard as Don obviously gives the film its little spark, especially with the title song, which went to number one. Also starring Lauri Peters as Barbara Winters, Melvyn Hayes as Cyril, Worzel Gummidge's Una Stubbs as Sandy, Teddy Green as Steve, Pamela Hart as Angie, Jeremy Bulloch as Edwin, Jacqueline Daryl as Mimsie, Madge Ryan as Stella Winters, Lionel Murton as Jerry, Christine Lawson as Annie, Ron Moody as The Great Orlando, David Kossoff as Magistrate, Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch, Jet Harris Jet Harris and Tony Meehan. Not the most memorable musical ever, but bits of it are fun to watch. It was number 99 on The 100 Greatest Family Films. Worth watching!

Eddy Huntington Outstanding musical which topped the UK box office that year, as did The Young Ones the previous year. The storyline is straightforward, but the songs, fashions and odd Brit quirks make this a superb piece of pop history. Cliff is superbly naive and the film is primarily a vehicle to sell his music, but it goes beyond that and is harmless, camp, iconic and superbly dated. Watch it and remember! As for being the British Elvis, I'm not convinced. Cliff always speaks highly of Elvis, but the two are not alike and probably shouldn't be compared. While there are several other films by Cliff, this and the Young Ones are the ones to watch. Wonderful Life had the same basic cast and formula, but lacked direction. Later films, like Take me High, while offering an idea of the 70's, don't quite cut it either. Stick to the big 2 and you shouldn't be disappointed.

Deusvolt If you didn't like the story, of which there was very little, you would have enjoyed the songs and the sheer teen exuberance of the whole idea - going on a summer holiday tour in an old London double-decker.In my case, it was just the right amount of medicine for a thirteen-year old with bad case of angst and weltschmerz. I felt the song "The Next Time" was all about me. At the time Cliff Richard was the British counterpart of Pat Boone - clean cut, a little naughty sometimes but generally a "good boy." No parent complained about him.Cliff's songs were very big hits in my country and we made good although somewhat senseless use of his "Bachelor Boy." As senior scouts we went camping at Mount Makiling, the former site of a World Scouting Jamboree. At 10:00 p.m. after taps when all lights should be out and everybody should be asleep, we would sing it boisterously and a scoutmaster would go up our camping ground, a long way from the tourist lodge where he was staying, to scold the delinquents into piping down. Only he didn't know it was us because the boys from other schools in the other tents never squealed on us. They must have enjoyed our singing.