Take Me High

The only bearable way to watch this film is to fast forward through all of the songs.So then you can watch George Cole before Minder,Hugh Griffith's overacting like mad and Richard Wattis making the most of his cameo and Anthony Andrews in his first film,before his role in Young Churchill.The brutalist architecture of Birmingham is unspeakably bad,like the film.

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.

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.

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!!!!!

By any measure this is a very cheesy film, but it's so harmless and wholesome you can't really take umbrage with it. Based around the jewel of the British Waterways, the Gas Street basin it offers a fascinating historical insight into this very special area of Birmingham. Sort of film you can enjoy as long as you restrict watching it to, say, every ten years or so.

It's a pity that it has yet to be released on a modern format as I know many Brummies would enjoy just watching the film for the shots around the City. A City which has changed much, Take me High provides a good visual snap shot of the capitol of the British Midlands just before it's decline as a light industrial engineering world centre.

During Cliffs tenure on his canal boat in the Gas Street basin he would have had a neighbour in the fictional Wilf Harvey popular elderly Crossroads character who lived on dry land adjacent to the canals.