In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

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.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

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.

The Drummer in the Ballroom scenes ........is that Spike Milligan ?

This film perfectly sums up the two-faces of the post-war generation, on the outside people put on a brave face, whilst just under the surface they are in emotional distress. It is very different to the other films in the Huggett series, which are primarily cheerful family comedies.Mr & Mrs Huggett and their grown children arrive at a holiday camp to "enjoy" themselves and put the worries of war time behind them. The people at the holiday camp do tightly scheduled activities, distracting themselves from dwelling on their past and present problems. (Keep look-out for the hilarious novelty bicycles that regularly roll through the background). The only truly happy characters in this film are Mr & Mrs Huggett and their two youngest children, who seem oblivious to the tightly guarded emotional problems of the adults around them.The eldest daughter of the Huggett's is clearly depressed by the loss of her husband, and yet social pressure from friends and family forces her to begin dating again. At one point, she refuses to enter a beauty pageant with her friend, so she is physically picked-up and carried by two men who drop her into the ques of beauties. All the single women we meet are full of sad nervous energy as they desperately try to work-out how to appease the men around them.This film contains themes of suicide, teen-pregnancy, substance-abuse and loss, all set against ridiculously cheerful backgrounds of people enjoying wholesome holiday activities. If you want to avoid devastation, DON'T watch the last 20 minutes. This film unexpectedly ends in the worst tragedy for the most vulnerable character, whilst contented characters remain innocently oblivious to the suffering around them.

My first inkling of Esma Cannon was in the BBC t.v. comedy series "The Rag Trade" from the early 1960s in which she played a comic "put upon" machinist.She was a funny comedienne with her 4'10" height and way of speaking.In "Holiday Camp" she again plays a lonely spinster on the look out for a beau.Unfortunately a confidence trickster and "Mannequin" murderer, "Sq. Ldr. Hardwick" (Dennis Price), takes her out for a walk down a remote country lane and although we don't see her end in the film, we have to presume she became his next victim.Bear in mind this was a 1947 family film and the British Board of Film Censors would have clamped down hard on any graphic sex & violence."Holiday Camp" has quite a cast and although Charlie Chester & Patricia Roc get star billing you only see them (as themselves) for very short scenes.The real stars are Jack Warner & Kathleen Harrison as working class parents Mr Joe & Mrs Ethel Huggett along with their daughter,Hazel Court as Joan Huggett who has a toddler in tow.I did not hear whether she was a war widow or had an unfortunate accident but she finds a boyfriend in the shape of Jimmy Hanley (Jimmy Gardner) who has been left a "Dear John" letter by his former girlfriend.There are some nice period touches like sweet rationing (Britain did not finally come off it until 1955 and I vividly remember my parents stocking up our rations so we could go away on holiday with our chocolate/butterscotch etc, (I was born in 1946).Of course contraception was not mentioned and a previous reviewer mentioned it was daring of Sydney Box (the screenplay writer) to include a subplot of a pregnant unmarried girl Valerie Thompson (Jeannete Tregathen) whose musical boyfriend Michael Halliday (Emrys Jones) cannot afford to keep them both.Which brings me to Dame Flora Robson.I was surprised to see her in this type of film as she normally appeared in serious drama but even a Shakespearean actress wants some light relief occasionally.She plays Esther Harman a woman who lost track of her boyfriend in 1918 and supposed him dead with the millions of others.She keeps a photograph of them as young lovers in her handbag.Due to a very unlikely coincidence (which only happens in films), it happens her old lover, Esmond Knight, is now married with two boys and working (although blind as a result of a mine) as the holiday camp announcer.Although she meets him in his office, she does not divulge who she is as she realises he is a happy man.Rather Esther becomes a sympathetic mother-type figure to Valerie and admonishes Valerie's very disapproving aunt played by Gainsborough stalwart Beatrice Varley for not lending her support to her niece's desperate need.Another subplot involves the perils of engaging cardsharps in pontoon, but Jack Warner thankfully comes to the rescue.Beauty parades, swimming, wonky bicycles, dances, entertainment on the stage, communal eating etc. its all there.I am so glad my parents took me & my two sisters down to the coast and avoided organised entertainment!!

A portmanteau movie centred round the Huggett family deeply rooted in working - class culture,decent,God - fearing,patriotic,proud of their place in society and secure and optimistic about the future for both themselves and their country.60 years later their descendants,hedonistic alcohol - fuelled,violent,stain their country's reputation in countries their great grandfathers helped to free from the very sort of nihilism they display.Thanks to six decades of Social Progress, the Huggetts and their beliefs have become the stuff of satire.Those terribly clever Monty Python chappies started it with their "funny" knotted handkerchief and sleeveless pully wearing drones and now everything the Huggetts would have held dear is held to ridicule. "Holiday Camp" gives you a chance to redress the balance.It features the wonderful Mr Jack Warner as the paterfamilias,sports jacket,open - necked shirt,pens in his top pocket,he is 1940 - 50s man made carnate.Miss K.Harrison displays all the strength she would have needed in the absence of a husband to have kept the family together during the recently - ended war. The Holiday Camp was many a British teenager's first taste of relative freedom and I have fond memories of my first visit in 1952 when my parents would go off the shows and leave me to my own devices.Magic days indeed. Watching "Holiday Camp" may be a bit like looking through your grandparents' snap album,but as time passes inexorably and history is re -written,like your grandparents' snap album it will become a true record of the way we were rather than the way the social engineers wish to portray us.