the audience applauded

As Good As It Gets

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

This film doesn't seem to be available on Youtube so I shall have to wait to refresh my memory of it until it appears one fine night or day out of peak hours on goodness knows what channel. But what I can remember of it I remember with fondness. I consider it a minor gem of early post-war British cinema. The War, and there is still only one war which we call the War, had not been long over after the time the film was set and produced and it does, from what I remember, reproduce that attitude of Little England, and Little Englanders, and a sense of England in the best sense of the phrase which has now disappeared. The two stories which are strong is Bill Owen so smarting from an inferiority complex he joins the Foreign Legion, and that would have made a good sequel in itself, and the heart warming story of Bill Sinden as the young veteran who finally finds himself and his heart through returning to France and encountering a lovely French girl - a dream for many Englishmen then and now! I believe the story ends with the organiser of the trip complaining that next year the annual Pub Trip will stay safely on the English side of the Channel! Vive La France and Vive L'Angleterre!

This film is very similar to Innocents In Paris.Both films have a similar concept.A group of English males going to a foreign country,France,and having various adventures,which in each case entails one of the group falling in love.The problem is that by and large the stories aren't particularly interesting in themselves.indeed the most laughable story concerns Bill Owen who decides to enlist in the foreign legion because everybody calls him shorty.There is a brief reference back to the women at home.Donald Sinden's girlfriend finds him too straitlaced so she teams up with a GI who will take her dancing.Sinden meanwhile is romancing a Frech girl.It is all very forgettable.incidentally watch Stanley Holloways headgear.At one time he is wearing a white floppy hat and then without warning it changes into a beret.

This film has to been seen for what it is, a nice little film from 1953, and not try to compare it to today's films or the classics of yesteryear from the big studios.There are some wonderful little touches in the film, if you really want to see them. Stanley Holloway as Charley Porter and how he says "'night Charlie!" while wiping the beer froth from his mouth as he leaves the pub. Donald Sinden who plays Jim Carver shows a young man that still holds memories of his past in the war (this film was done only 8 years after the end of WW2). A lovely touch is when he's back in France, with the sound of the tanks and then the tractor. Jim Carver was a tank sergeant. When you see the film, you'll see what I mean.This film was done in a very innocent time, and yet not long after a violent nasty war. It deals with the past well and Odile Versois's character Martine Berthier, is wonderful to see. How she views things is a delight.Look out also for Shirley Eaton (later to be a James Bond Girl), she's not credited in the film, yet is seen several times ... Train Station, and the Ferry.

The plot of this movie is summed up very literally by it's title. It's the story of several middle aged but rather naive members of a darts team from a London pub who go on a trip to Bologne and each of whom experience their own little "day to remember". It's all rather poorly executed and several of the performances are really quite dire. There are precious few twists and turns in the plot, and it's all rather predictable - it's only saving grace is an excellent performance by the rather beautiful Odile Versois (who plays Martine) and her smashing little Peugeot. But not one I'd watch again through choice.