Raising the Wind

I should confess right away that I spent two years as a student in a conservatory, and have spent all my life hanging around with musicians. I'm sure that influenced my positive opinion about this movie, and I can understand why other reviewers who don't share my background don't find it funny.

I knew I was going to enjoy it when the opening credits featured cartoons by the inimitable Gerard Hoffunung. The cast list also promised a host of Britain's most amusing character players. The script and score are by Bruce Montgomery, a fine mystery writer and film composer. And how odd that the opening scene outside the music school used the exact same filming location as was used for the hospital in "Doctor in the House." (Not to mention that the doctor's nemesis also plays the students' nemesis here, too.)

Of course, as others have pointed out, most of the actors are too old for their "student" roles, and the plot is fairly thin (but typical for a sitcom). What's funny for me are all the jokes and situations that any working musician will have had to deal with: overbearing teachers, time-wasting teachers, blabbing conductors, over-confident student hot-shots, conflict between "serious" and "pop" music, etc. If you don't know who Barbirolli and Sargent are, you'll miss a couple of jokes. (And you might not also catch the "skeletons on a tin roof" joke from Sir Thomas Beecham.) There's even a tip of the hat to Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, if you look carefully at the music school sign.

The 90 minutes breezed by, and the HD version available on Amazon Prime looked pristine on my iPad. Recommended highly for musical people; and fairly highly for fans of mid-century British comedy. Kenneth Williams alone is worth the price of admission.

It,s Interesting that the reviews here criticising it are British and the one who gives it the thumbs up is American and I agree with him this film is very good. It,s less smutty than the carry on films and not really slapstick It,s just good clean fun.

This may not be the greatest film ever made but it is good. A great cast and they do deliver they Hit the Right Note It,s funny and well written, Jill Ireland appears in one of her first roles as does Jim Dale Who after this film got the recommendation of Kenneth Williams to join the Carry on team, (His first Carry On, Cabby, wasn,t originally a carry on).

It seems that the British are the first to run British films down, thats sad.

Mercurial film-making talent Gerald Thomas, the iconic 'Carry On' impresario directs an unexpectedly spry and witty 60s musical comedy which proved to the finest in his cinematic Laugh-Time! The breezy, bon-mottled script by gifted composer Bruce Montomery is an unexpectedly clever, effervescent delight, being no less brightly performed by a luminous cast of sterling film & TV favourites, including an especially colourful performance by the avuncular character actor James Robertson Justice who is on splendidly Stentorian form as the imperious Sir Benjamin Boyd, making the most of his deliciously acid monologues! A whimsical, beautifully composed, altogether soulful comedy which rarely misses a beat! Encore! Encore!

Although largely the work of the 'Carry On' team (it was a pet project of producer Peter Rogers') it actually feels more like one of the 'Doctor' films with bluer jokes - shot like them in pretty colour - and dealing with the travails of a mature-looking bunch of students in the days when students wore jackets & ties and £4 a week seemed a steep rent. And, of course, there's the presence of James Robertson Justice and University College Hospital standing in for the London Academy of Music and the Arts instead of St.Swithin's (while Leslie Phillips later switched to the 'Doctor' series).

This is possibly the only movie on which the composer is also the author of the script, Bruce Montgomery (briefly glimpsed conducting Handel's 'Messiah' in one sequence) being the real name of the eminent crime writer Edmund Crispin whose only screenplay this was.

Take the series formula for DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (including James Robertson Justice as the tyrannical authority, of course), change the setting from a hospital to a music school and swap out director Ralph Thomas for his little brother Gerald and you have this movie, an amusing if formulaic comedy.

Gerald Thomas was best known for directing three billion CARRY ON movies and TV episodes, and there are a couple of differences in the handling of the movie. In the DOCTOR movies, there was a central character, originally played by Dirk Bogarde. This movie is far more an ensemble affair, and the director uses several of his CARRY ON regulars to good effect. Eric Barker is particularly amusing as a vague composition teacher who tells Paul Massie to take up golf so they can have something to talk about during lessons.

The actors playing students seem a little long in the tooth for students, but like all good comedies, it's more about the performances than making sure people look exactly like their characters should (although putting glasses on Liz Fraser to make her look more intellectual than her usual dizzy blonde character is a reasonable effort). All in all, Thomas directs a movie that is nicely placed in tone between the two popular series.