Laughterhouse

This splendid film, generally, and best, titled SINGLETON'S PLUCK, is a tale of livestock raiser Ben Singleton (Ian Holm) who will not yield to pressure from the United Kingdom's Transport and General Workers Union, thereon taking it upon himself to walk his 500 plumped geese to London, in the absence of available union-controlled lorry transportation. He expects an arduous journey and is fortunately accompanied by his wife, daughter, and two loyal workers who help by driving his pair of vans fore and aft of the flock while alternating as drovers. A well-crafted screenplay by actor Brian Grover includes full measure of realistic dialogue, strengthening the incident filled goose stepping affair set and filmed in Norfolk, Suffolk, and into London to Smithfield Market where the birds will be processed for Christmas feasting. Adroit direction by Richard Eyre allows for seamless stirring in of several connected subplots, relating to family conflict, meddling media, young love, et alia, each enacted in a fashion not jarring to one's sensibilities. When the quartet arrives with its geese at its geographic goal, with no longer having a purpose of moving the waddlers along a variety of roads, a need for an appropriate climax is supplied to a viewer's satisfaction. There is a didactic purpose of sorts to the film, referent to inefficient aggressiveness of trade unions, but it is not unduly emphasized, and one must especially appreciate diffident and humourous elements touching upon potentially somber issues. Noteworthy contributions are made by many, ensuring artistic success of this fine production, including the playing of Holm, Penelope Wilton as Ben's wife and Richard Hope and Bill Owen as the pair of Singleton assistants, in addition to a salad of creative cinematographic compositions by Clive Tickner, David Martin's first-rate editing, and an ever appropriate score from Dominic Muldowney, paced and controlled perfectly throughout by Eyre. A most unusual and openly sentimental film, enriched by a combined effort to an extent that each scene is of the best quality; plaudits are due to all members of the cast and crew.

Billed as an Ealing type comedy sadly this has none of the charms that those most of those films had. Storywise there's no problem but the execution of it is very bad. The script and performances are so uneven and erratic that it's very hard to watch. Some of the dialogue is very random and irellevant it feels like a pick'n mix from other films. A shame when the similarly themed 'Fly Away Home' did it so well. It looks good though and has a lovely score.

Hello IMDb, I am not very good at this sort of thing all I know is, I saw this film on TV years ago and I felt very good afterwards. It was that kind of film. This man fought against everything that was trying to stop him getting his Geese to market and he won even if it was a hard slog on the way. I remember thinking at the time that it would have been even better if it had been shown at Easter or even Christmas but where we lived at the time ( Sussex England ) it was shown in between these two holidays and I think children were in school when it was shown ( afternoon I think). Children would have loved it because it was an all family film. I have never forgotten it and have tried for many years to find a Video Rental Shop that stocked it but without any success. Now I know where to look (have not had computer long) when I can afford it I will buy it though I don't know how much that would be because I don't buy films as a rule, I usually tape what I want to keep but at time did not have a Video recorder when film was originally shown. I now live in Devon England and there is nowhere one can rent it from, so I say to everyone out there,if you get a chance, watch this film because it really was wonderful.

Yours sincerely

Elizabeth Scott Mckenzie