Undescribable Perfection

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Let's face it, Cliff's greatest asset has always been his singing. His stage movement is notoriously naff, and he was never the greatest actor.But he was always surrounded with a tolerable ensemble and, especially here and in Summer Holiday, some sunny production values.The trouble is the story here is rather weak and the songs, with a couple of exceptions, are especially weak. Richard O'Sullivan, an actor of some ability, uses that ability to provoke extreme irritation. Melvyn Hayes is his usual comic relief fall guy. Una Stubbs is cute and dances the socks off everyone else (and would have been such a good leading lady if she'd ever been given the opportunity). Walter Slezak fulfills what the plot requires of him. And Susan Hampshire is versatile, fetching, and downright hot.The best sequence is an extended trawl through the history of movies - hardly profound, but fun.But it is all pretty dated stuff.

'Wonderful Life' has its moments. Moments when you feel you can close your gaping mouth and swallow. The rest of the time you are just blown away by the arrogance of the people who thought this qualified as entertainment in any way shape or form, by the stupidity of the people who put up the money - which looks to have been an awful lot - and by the tragedy of how this pile of undercooked nostalgia was the best the mainstream British film industry could be bothered to come up with at the time. Oh, and never mind the complete ego trip of Cliff, comparing himself to every mainstream film icon from Chaplin to Sean Connery - there's even a creepy bit where he is smooching Susan Hampshire in a bikini (pre-nose job, much nicer) and his hand wanders down to her lap, then his fly...no, it's a tiny gun on his key fob! Eee-Yeww! An honourable mention for Una Stubbs looking older than she does now and baring more midriff than Madonna, and the rest of it is rubbish songs ('On The Beach' is the best of a woeful bunch), bizarre choreography, school play acting, weedy singing, useless dubbing, faulty colour grading, you get the idea - presumably this was part of Cliff's plan to 'crack' the US market, but to me it's a rival to 'Take Me High' as something you want erased from your memory as soon a possible. And TMH was funny. NOT so bad it's good. So bad it's infuriating.

OK - The Young Ones was a pleasant enough little movie, with some great songs to hide the pacing problems and weaknesses in the plot. Summer Holiday was a towering success on every level and remains to this day an absolute joy to watch, so just how, only 1 year after that wonderful film, did the same production team manage to make a film so utterly uninteresting and unenjoyable? I mean, I really wanted to like this movie but after several viewings I had to give in and admit that it really is an absolute disaster! Their first mistake of course was not keeping the same actors from Summer Holiday who all seemed to gel together so well and contribute to the enormous charm of that movie. And bringing the Richard O Sullivan character back from The Young Ones was surely a big mistake. The absence of Teddy Green in Wonderful Life is really felt, big time. I kept hoping he, Jeremy Bulloch and the others from Summer Holiday would appear and turn this monstrosity around, but sadly no. All we have is almost 2 hours of O Sullivan and Hayes irritating the heck out of us and a plot that just drifts with no direction whatsoever.And this time the songs aren't strong enough to cover up the cracks in the plot. True, there are a few exceptions, notably The Shadows' "Theme for Young Lovers", "On The Beach" and "A Matter of Moments" but they aren't enough to disguise the fact that this is really a terribly disappointing film.

A truly nonsenscial muscial comedy, it's nevertheless Cliff Richard's best in the musical genre. ( He did a couple of dramatic films which were his best) A rather bland singer competing with his similar American counterparts Elvis Presley and Frankie Avalon, Richards fared no better than they in comedy and musical scripts. This one at least contains Susan Hampshire and Walter Slezak. What makes this movie so entertaining is the zippy pace and the surprisingly great dancing and choreography. The big dance number on the set by the whole crew is spectacular and rivals "West Side Story". Incidentally, the long-legged Richards keeps right up with the rest of them and does even better at it than his singing! The cute little send-up of the history of the movies is also very entertaining.