Finders Keepers

You get what you expect to get with this film, Cliff and The Shadows, and a bevy of beauties for them to hook up with, bursting into song and dance at regular intervals.

Nicely shot in glorious colour although none of the tunes stick in the mind for long after being heard. The musical, or should that be alleged musical, that I reviewed before this was "La La Land" and this film is vastly superior to that mess of a film.

An enjoyable romp with the boys in nice scenery and for this type of film the plot is not too silly. A worthwhile watch from days sadly long gone by, just a bit of innocent fun which has not existed in films for some time now.

It's now available as a "legitimate" DVD and comes up sparkling. The plot's not up to much but the photography and art direction are excellent and there are a few laughs. It doesn't compare with The Dave Clark Five in the earlier Catch Us If You Can, which has better songs and, despite a much lower budget, a real sense of purpose.

Yes, the plot is so thin you could floss your teeth with it. Yes, the pop idols can't act and the songs aren't the best. But if you accept the fact that this is a silly movie from the silliest decade of all, you'll waste an enjoyable 90 minutes on this film. Especially if you're a fan of Cliff Richard, the Shadows, and/or spy spoofs. Come on, who wouldn't want to see the boys gallavanting around a Spanish fiesta disguised (for no good reason) as a roving guitar troupe?

I saw this film just the once, when it first came out and I was in my teens. I remember it being on a par with Cliff's other films - enjoyable, colourful, escapist nonsense, enhanced with some good songs.

But what has happened to it? The Young Ones, Summer Holiday, and Wonderful Life have all featured regularly on British TV and have had video and DVD releases, yet Finders Keepers has disappeared almost without trace (this is also true of Cliff's subsequent films Take Me High and Two A Penny, but they weren't musicals: Finders Keepers is.

The film's songs are all good. Written by the Shadows, they are mostly cheerful and plot-relevant, and they include the haunting This Day, a ballad performed while boating through subterranean caverns, I think. The soundtrack is well worth a listen.

Personally, I'd welcome an opportunity to see the darn thing again.

Addition: I have acquired a somewhat under the radar DVD of Finders Keepers - dubbed from an off-air VHS taping, I suspect. The songs are, indeed, all very good. The rest of the film, alas, is not. The plot is ludicrous, the script is poor, people behave in all sorts of illogical ways, and even the British comedy stalwarts are ill-treated by what they are given to do (I never thought I would report that John Le Mesurier wasn't very good but, sadly, it is so). And the editing of the climactic musical number is shambolic.

Last and least of Cliff Richard's trio of travelogues, it's actually of far greater interest as writer Michael Pertwee's second satire on the arms race of the sixties (the first being 'The Mouse on the Moon').

The same subject of a lost nuclear bomb was dealt with again the next year in the far more pretentious but much sillier 'The Day the Fish Came Out'.