Excellent, Without a doubt!!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This story was never among my favourites in Christie's works so I was pleasantly surprised to quite enjoy this adaptation. The mouse motif was effective if a little overdone, the bones of the story are there although more emphasis is placed on the 'crime in the past' subplot. The students were all pretty much as I imagined them although its a pity they weren't a more cosmopolitan bunch - perhaps the revised thirties setting didn't allow for that! I thought some very daring risks were taken with the filming; perhaps its because I've not long re-read the book but it seemed pretty obvious to me who the murderer was from their appearance in some reveal shots quite early on.Humour was much more prevalent in these early Poirots. Sometimes it works but I found a lot of it rather heavy handed in this episode (though I did smile at the 'Lemon sole' throwaway line). Altogether though, a solid entry in the series though not one of the best.

It all begins with a series of thefts of seemingly unrelated objects in a hostel for students on Hickory Road, London. Concerned for her sister, who is the housekeeper there, Miss Lemon asks Hercule Poirot to look into the matter. He agrees, but soon the stakes get higher when a girl, who had admitted that she was responsible for most (not all) of the thefts, is found murdered."Hickory Dickory Dock" is a solid brain exercise, without being as mind-numbingly complicated as "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe". Murder, theft and diamond smuggling are the crimes involved, and the final twist that ties everything together is revealed only in the last 2 minutes! The characters are interesting, particularly the psychology student Colin McNabb and the mysterious American girl Sally Finch, Inspector Japp has his funny moments (in perhaps the closest this series has come to "toilet humor"), and Miss Lemon gets a more integral part to the story than usual. (***)

The original book of this was set in the 1950s but that won't do for the TV series because most people watch for the 1930s style. Ironically the tube train near the end was a 1950s train painted to look like a 1930s train so the Underground can play at that game too. Hanging the storyline on a plot about the Jarrow March was feeble but the 50s version had students who were beginning to think about the world around them so I suppose making them think about the poverty of the marchers is much the same thing. All the stuff about Japp having to cater for himself was weak too but they had to put something in to fill the time. This would have made a decent half hour show or they could have filmed the book and made it a better long show. It is obvious this episode is a victim of style over content.

These Suchet-led adaptations of Poirot are frustratingly uneven because the producers brought in a different creative team for each one. Sometimes they understand the strength of the source material, and other times they go off on some unrelated direction that they graft onto the plot.They already start with a disadvantage. Suchet produces an entertaining character for sure. But the foibles of Christie's detective were all found to be assets in how he approached a problem. It was almost as if he were from some alien world where people thought differently and so could "see" things we could not.In this case, he's just a comic man who incidentally solves mysteries as if that were another eccentricity. So instead of the puzzle and his attempts to unwind it, we get:-- a bunch of buffoonery about Poirot's and Japp's eating habits-- some excessive cinematic nonsense about a mouse who appears through the story-- in an unrelated insertion, we have the chanting of a nursery rhyme every time something bad is happeningThis is the worst of a bad lot. Please avoid it.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.