i must have seen a different film!!

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I'm writing this review because I really enjoyed this remake of "The Lady Vanishes" When I looked it up on IMB it had a low rating and not very kind reviews,after watching it i wanted to let others know Its very good. British TV at its best with an excellent performance from Tuppence Middleton as the socialite Ms Carr and the wonderful Tom Hughes. The Vicar and his wife were also very convincing and very real performers. This is my favorite period in history, just before the war, the clothes are wonderful with the young people rich and glamorous seemingly having it all with there frivolous fun filled holiday in Italy, with the other hotel members frowning on there loose morals, Ms Carr the rudest of them. This is all very well set up as the train journey begins the story twists and turns with everyone playing there part so well as the suspense is building. Its a top notch remake of a great story with the best ending! Very well done by all the actors involved.

There was clearly a commitment to deliver a high quality remake here... and in many ways it is just that. High production values, location filming, excellent cast, and a leading lady with the charm and edge necessary to bring a potentially unsympathetic character to life. In fact ion another day this would indeed have been a star making turn. Sadly though, all the worthy intentions of the films makers, in particular the unnecessary lengthening of the opening piece, the addition of the girls back story, etc. put a drag on the film that it takes almost the entirety of the rest of the movie to overcome. Those worthy intentions which are also apparent in the reshaping of the earlier films comedy characters Chalmers & Caldicot, (two Colonel Blimp type figures that leavened the earlier film with humour at just the right moments) into two equally stereotypical, but far less humorous Maiden Aunt types. Then just as the films slow start and general heaviness are fading and the stories drama begins to take hold, it jettisons all that Hitchcock brought to the final scenes, dispensing with the coming together of so many disparate types with all their flaws and foolishness in the face of a common and soon to be tyrannical enemy, and fades out with damp squib, supposedly more plausible in its own dull way, as if plausibility is essential for suspense! Dear film makers, Hitch knew what he was doing, beware of thinking you know better.

I probably made a mistake in coming to this most recent remake of "The Lady Vanishes" just days after watching Hitchcock's definitive 1939 version. There's just no comparison. Hitch's version was fast moving, exciting, suspenseful, funny and sexy while this version was by contrast, turgid, dull, predictable, humourless and staid.The central character of Iris garners no interest from the viewer right from the start and quite why she's made to fall down a steep hill after witnessing a scene between the illicit lovers "Mr & Mrs Todmorton" is anyone's guess. Anyway, back at the hotel she throws a strop and decides to let her so called friends return to England before her, although within a day she's hey-presto on the next train herself, free spirit that she is. There she bumps into a friendly middle-aged woman who befriends her in the face of foreign frostiness, before the latter makes like the title and precipitates her attempts to find her and save her from a dastardly fate.Only thing is you get no sense of connection between Iris and Miss Froy, in fact the latter witters on so much that if she sat next to me on a train I'd welcome any chance I got to escape her attentions. Moreover there's no mystery at all, the Hitchcock reveal of Miss Froy's writing her name in the condensation of the train window substituted for an English newspaper discarded in her compartment. There's no mysterious nun to alert suspicion, the romance between Iris and the professor's young assistant appears out of thin air while the rescue conclusion is wholly devoid of thrills.I didn't feel the cast did much to lift an already stodgy production either, but the starriest players ever couldn't have made this dead duck fly. In trying, I presume to distance itself from being a slavish copy of the famous original it seemed to completely forget it was meant to be a romantic comedy-thriller.Now excuse me while I try to forget I ever saw this whole dreary programme...

I don't know if this is more faithful to the original book than the famous Hitchcock version. But if it is, it shows extraordinary vision of him to have seen the material for a good movie in this boring nonsense. Wholly without humour or tension, I see it has an estimated budget of £1850. Even at that priced, the BBC was swindled. This is one of those films where it is a real strain to write the required 10 lines of comment because all one can say is it is boring. The events before the start of the train journey are truncated so we get no sense of the purpose underlying the plot. Nor is there any sexual tension in the relationships. Although too long, it feels that some key scenes necessary to understanding the role of some characters must be missing. Or maybe those characters have no role and are just there to pad out the numbers. The actors cannot be blamed for any of this. Tuppence Middleton is beautiful and makes the best of her part. Others are either competent or better, with none of the odd comic standup turns which often disfigure remakes like the ITV Marple series. So all the blame has to go to the writer, Fiona Seres and the director, Diarmuid Lawrence. And to the BBC for not throwing this in the bin rather than on to our screens. Whatever you do, do not let this tedious waste of time discourage you from finding and watching the brilliant Hitchcock original.