Take Me High

Essentially an extended music video clip for Cliff Richards.

Richards is a merchant banker who is moved to Birmingham and what follows is a montage of the brutalist concrete architecture that made Birmingham worse, and shots of flyovers before they were covered in tags and vomit.

George Cole is there and there's a famous scene of shooting the television set. Later there is a 1980s direct-to-video film style plot line where Richards and his girlfriend plan to open a burger bar selling "Brumburgers".

There's quite a lot of embarrassed people in the street scene, as if having to live in Birmingham wasn't punishment enough ! Product placement - BOAC airlines.

While his 60s films fit in with the juvenile delinquent and teenage beach movies of the time, this one keeps up with those fans who were now in their 20s. Another romantic comedy with a memorable music score and set in the UK's second city, Cliff now has an office job but he's still a bachelor.

It would be a dozen years before Cliff would do the Dave Clark musical TIME in the West End (no longer in the office but a rock star) followed 10 years later by his version of Wuthering Heights. The musical Heathcliff was a life-long ambition of Cliff's (and he played the married, then widowed seriously misunderstood man quite well). TIME was never released in video format but Heathcliff was. Take Me High is also available on video. His voice only got better, so you can't go wrong with any of these releases.

OK so it's Cliff in flares in Birmingham but this film has a charm all it's own. The soundtrack is brilliant, these songs are very good and the storyline is refreshing in that it's based in England. Anthony Andrews and Hugh Griffiths are great and Cliff is, well, Cliff!

Watch it enough times and you'll soon have your favourite scenes, lines and even songs. The moral is still relevant today - money and the pursuit of real happiness. There are some good actors in this and George Cole is superb as a hardbitten socialist. Cliff has some great outfits in this, truly 100% 1973 gear and it's an interesting snapshot of life in this country all those years ago. I'd like to add that Gas Street IS in the middle of Birmingham - we did the map fold!!!!!

This is not the best known of Cliff Richard's films, but personally I like it very much. Cliff plays an ambitious young businessman helping a girl who lives on a narrow-boat to start her own restaurant. Deborah Watling is charming as the young chef, and George Cole and Hugh Griffith provide strong comic support, with Anthony Andrews suitably suave as Cliff's rival. The songs are good, especially the title song Take Me High. The most striking thing about the film though is the Birmingham location, i don't think there are many films set in Birmingham, and I imagine very few musicals, possibly this film is unique in that respect. Birmingham is not the most picturesque of cities, but this film shows it in quite an attractive light, especially the canal scenes. Altogether this is a charming film.

This is a shocker. No other word for it. Cliff has certainly grown up since his adolescent efforts of the late 1960s, but what they had by way of innocent charm and boppy numbers then has been replaced here by a ridiculous plot, some serious hamming from Hugh Griffiths, conceivably the worst song I've ever heard in a film - "Brumburger" (the story being set in Birmingham) and a banal dialogue that would test the patience of Mother Theresa. The poster claims there are twelve new songs, but they have neither the weight nor the catchiness to sustain this over-long story that shows the city at it's most architecturally brutal. The assembled cast including a debut appearance from Anthony Andrews and some mischief from veteran George Cole just make it worse. The story is all over the place, and the direction seems uncertain as to whether this is a piece of entertainment or a series of video-guides of the city's rather grim urban landscape - either way it really is quite a struggle. Sorry, but even his most ardent fans must appreciate that this is a poor film on just about every front.