Jim Dixon works in that most protected of places a redbrick university! However his natural laziness and clumsiness sees him forced to keep in the favour of the dull and absentminded Professor Welch in order to protect his job. With his natural affinity for bad luck, Jim struggles to find a quiet life and a unwanted romance with Margaret (the professor's friend) just make things more difficult. Things get worse when he is put in charge of organising things for the new chancellor but Welch's son arrives in the company of a beautiful young woman, Christine, who Jim finds very attractive but totally unattainable.
With people like the Boutling brothers, Carmichael and Thomas involved I was definitely going to watch this film when they showed it last week as part of the normal cycle of black & white films on daytime TV afternoons, however I must admit not to be entirely won over by this. I have not read the book on which this is based, but I am told that it is a great deal sharper than this film, not a surprise since the film surprised me by having absolutely no satirical edge to it whatsoever and instead seemed to be aiming to be a vague farce. The plot has no sharp edges to it and it only has a very basic sense of humour that involves more pratfalls than witty dialogue and, as a result, I found little here that I actually cared enough about to get into the film. The laughs weren't forthcoming, the plot was rather shallow and uninteresting and the characters were thin.
With all these problems it is no real surprise that even the talent in this cast struggle to make anything of it. Carmichael plays it all too foppish and clumsy and he never really gets a character out of the film. Even Terry Thomas seems unsure of what he is supposed to be doing with this stuff and he doesn't make any memorable impact. Acker is very pretty and Griffith is suitable cast but generally the cast are let down by the material.
Overall this is an average film that doesn't compare to the many better films that the main cast members, producer and director have all done. Usually I would say that any film with these people involved would be worth seeing but unfortunately I can say it about this outing.
