Summer Holiday

Redefines family entertainment. I had totally forgotten about this mini-musical until I came across it on the IMDb just five minutes ago, whilst looking for something else that I really don't care about now.

Dear old Sir Cliff! What a time to be 18/19! I was actually just 17 when this came out and so hopelessly in love with my cousin there WAS nothing else in my life at the time. God was feeling charitable towards me in those days and orchestrated events so that she happened to come to my hometown and stay over. I asked her to go to the local theater with me and we sat in the back row watching this film....least SHE did, I had other things on my mind! What does the plot matter? Cliff as a bus driver taking his friends (Cliff's backing group - The Shadows...how odd I can remember those names...Jet Harris, Tony Meehan and Hank Marvin....and I haven't even thought about them for forty years!) on a European vacation and picking up girls on the way - between songs of course.

God! I'd like to see this again! I still have the original 45 rpm release! (for those of you could really care).

If you didn't like the story, of which there was very little, you would have enjoyed the songs and the sheer teen exuberance of the whole idea - going on a summer holiday tour in an old London double-decker.

In my case, it was just the right amount of medicine for a thirteen-year old with bad case of angst and weltschmerz. I felt the song "The Next Time" was all about me. At the time Cliff Richard was the British counterpart of Pat Boone - clean cut, a little naughty sometimes but generally a "good boy." No parent complained about him.

Cliff's songs were very big hits in my country and we made good although somewhat senseless use of his "Bachelor Boy." As senior scouts we went camping at Mount Makiling, the former site of a World Scouting Jamboree. At 10:00 p.m. after taps when all lights should be out and everybody should be asleep, we would sing it boisterously and a scoutmaster would go up our camping ground, a long way from the tourist lodge where he was staying, to scold the delinquents into piping down. Only he didn't know it was us because the boys from other schools in the other tents never squealed on us. They must have enjoyed our singing.

In the late fifties and early sixties Cliff Richard was widely regarded, at least in Britain itself, as our answer to Elvis Presley. Both were handsome, dark-haired rock-and-rollers who also ventured into acting, generally in lighthearted musicals designed to showcase their music. There was, however, one major difference. In the early part of his career Elvis was a surprisingly controversial figure whose overt sexuality meant that he was widely denounced in the media and from the pulpit as a degenerate influence on the nation's youth. Nobody ever denounced Cliff; even before he publicly came out as a born-again Christian in 1964 he was widely regarded as a wholesome, clean-cut young man who appealed not just to Britain's youth but also to their parents. (And, in my case, even to my grandmother who ranked "Congratulations" as her all-time favourite pop song).

"Summer Holiday" was one of a number of musical comedies from this period starring Cliff and his backing group, The Shadows. Cliff plays Don, one of four young London Transport bus mechanics who persuade their employers to lend them a double-decker bus which they convert into a holiday caravan. They set off for the continent, originally intending to holiday somewhere in the South of France. They change their plans, however, when they meet a trio of young female singers who are trying to make their way to a gig in Athens. Realising that the girls' clapped-out old car will never make it that far, the boys chivalrously agree to change their plans and to take the girls to Greece. They are also joined by a teenaged American boy named Bobby.

Five boys and three girls seems a rather uneasy recipe for a romantic comedy, even if Don seems uninterested in love and romance, declaring in song his intention to remain a "bachelor boy until my dying day". The odds are evened, however, when Bobby (real name Barbara) is revealed to be a girl in disguise. It turns out that Barbara is a successful pop singer who is running away from her overbearing mother, and this revelation is enough to make Don rethink his commitment to lifelong bachelorhood. The film then follows the four boys and four girls on their journey from France to Greece, via Switzerland, Austria and Yugoslavia, singing appropriate songs at each stop. 1960s Yugoslavia would, on the evidence of this film, seem to have been a rather primitive place, a backward peasant society which had not changed much since the 1360s.

The music is mostly cheerful sixties Britpop, although there are occasional ventures into other genres. "Bachelor Boy" shows the influence of folk music, "Really Waltzing" is a parody of Viennese operetta and "Foot Tapper" the sort of instrumental number in which The Shadows specialised. In "Let Us Take You for a Ride" the lyricist achieved the difficult feat of turning a report on the mechanical condition of a motor-car into a witty number. "The Next Time" is a wistful ballad which, like "Foot Tapper" and the title song, got to number one in the British charts, although today it is less well known than "Bachelor Boy" which was released as its B-side.

The film was a major hit in Britain, grossing more at the British box office than any other film of 1963 except the Bond film "From Russia with Love". It was not, however, a success in America, partly because it opened there two days after the Kennedy assassination but also because the "British Invasion" of American pop culture did not really start until the following year. That invasion was very much spearheaded by the Beatles, and Cliff, along with the other leading figures of the pre-Beatles British rock scene, was never really part of it. Even after 1964 he only had one big American hit, "Living Doll".

Today, "Summer Holiday" might seem to be of historical interest only except for those old enough to remember Cliff Richard in his heyday, for whom it will also have nostalgic value. I must admit that I am not quite old enough to fall into this group, but even so I found a lot to enjoy in it; it is good-natured, tuneful and often amusing. Quite honestly, I found that it stands up better today than do a lot of those Elvis musicals from around the same period. 7/10

It's not as good as the previous "The Young Ones", there is no Robert Morley here, and the music is less first rate. Still it's fabulous entertainment in gorgeous colours and wonderful musical numbers including many outstanding dance sequences. Laurie Peters is a good match for Cliff Richard, and the story is excellent too: a bunch of lads working in a garage decide to leave the dreariness of the climate in England to go for a holiday south, and for that purpose they refashion a London double-decker as a camping bus with kitchen and facilities and go off through all Europe with Athens for a destination. On the way they collect passengers, especially girls, and in France a whole troupe of mime actors join the party and effect marvellous entertainment. There are many ingenious innovations in this film, and the high level of good humour never slackens. The only crooks are some intruders from America headed by Laurie Peters' dreadful mother, but even she is ultimately converted by Cliff Richard. He is no great actor, but he is a fabulous artist, and whenever he performs, he dominates everything. It's a vein of wild good houmour throughout, which can even be viewed with positive digestion and delight more than once. Forget the superficiality, and concentrate on the colours, the entertainment and the consistently wonderful good mood.

It truly is incredible to think a film so good was made so long ago. Incredibly clever scenes were created with such limited special effects available, and the camera quality is watchable. The politics have not stood the test of time. From the border line kidnapping of women that attracts them to the men, to the lack of any pocs that aren't maids, there are serious 'room for improvements'. Although this does not really excuse the behaviour, I do think it's important to remember the period this was made in and not criticize the entire film for that. The songs may be the best bit, but after you watch it they will not leave your conscious mind for at least a month - you have been warned. With such and array of happy and sad songs, it may have one of the best musical numbers of that decade. All in all, it's a great film that everyone should watch at least once in their life.