Norman, O Marujo Maluco

Grocer delivery boy Norman Puckle is frustrated in his attempts to et a local girl and tries to kill himself. However he is saved at the last minute and told that to join the navy is to get all the girls he'll ever want. However Norman is not a sea-faring man by trade and struggles with the disciplined lifestyle required. Things are made worse when The Admiral selects him for an experimental rocket as proof that any sailor could operate it given the proper training. He hadn't planned on Norman.

Wisdom is very much an acquired taste. I'm not an Albanian but I do still enjoy most of his films. Here the plot sees him as, wait for it, a lowly worker who makes good, gets the girl and shows up the toffs at the same time! So not a mile (or a yard) away from the usual fare then. But that's fine, the usual stuff is actually OK. Here his usual routines are mostly OK but some are just average. If you usually get a laugh from it then this will just about suffice.

Wisdom is good and has a strong support cast. However the problem is that it feels too heavily on his shoulders and the rest aren't used well enough to share the load. When you've got actors like Hunter, Chapman, Jones, Alexander and the ever great Le Mesurier then you need to use them. Most have the odd good line or two but I wanted more from all of them.

The comedy is basic and times and you know where it's heading from minute number 1! I'm a fan and found this to be amusing but not Wisdom's best by any means. If this is your first meeting with Wisdom then you may be disappointed, fans will enjoy it.

The Bulldog Breed is a Norman Wisdom vehicle that's directed by Robert Asher & co-written by Wisdom with Henry Blyth & Jack Davies. Plot sees Wisdom as Norman Puckle, a hapless grocer's assistant who is hopelessly in love with Marlene (Penny Morell). When she spurns his offer of marriage he attempts to commit suicide, but he proves to be inept at that as well. Finally settling on jumping off of "Lover's Leap" as a sure fire way to die, he is saved at the last minute by a Naval Officer who seduces him with talk of life as a sailor, where the girls are plenty and life is totally great. Buying into it Norman enrols, but he quickly finds that it's a tough life, that he is hopeless as a sailor and that the commander wants to fly him off into outer space!.

The Bulldog Breed comes at a time when Wisdom was most prolific on the big screen, in a 17 year period from 1953 to 1969 Wisdom was the lead star in 15 movies. While during this time he was lending support to a number of ensemble and TV pictures too. It's inevitable that during a busy period such as this that the quality of entertainment will vary, this effort falls some where in the middle on the list of Wisdom's best movies. The formula remains the same as Wisdom plays plays a bumbling but lovable dope who creates carnage where ever he goes. The comedy set pieces are many, with a "man overboard" sequence of events the particular highlight. While it also serves as an interesting snap shot of the times. Where The Bulldog Breed differs from many of Wisdom's most fondly thought of film's is with its darker tones of suicide and sexual suggestion (the latter beautifully brought to life by the sultry Liz Fraser). It's an odd mix of a film, and one that has proved to divide Wisdom purists. Newcomers to his work are most likely better off choosing something else as a starting point to his movie output. 6/10

Footnote: The film marks early appearances of Michael Caine and Oliver Reed who share a scene together with Wisdom. While fans of British soap Coronation Street will find value in seeing actors Johnny Briggs and William Roache also appearing in the piece.

Norman Wisdom was a household name in the UK and he had a very long and successful career. However, here in the States very few have ever heard of him or have a taste for his comedy. I watched this film purely to see Michael Caine in a VERY small uncredited part...mostly because I've seen nearly all his films and might as well see them all!

After trying to impress Marlene and completely botching it, Norman decides to kill himself. Unfortunately, before jumping off a cliff, a sailor stops him and convinces him to join the navy instead of suicide. Without any sort of basic training, Norman is now assigned to a ship where he instantly makes a total nuisance of himself. At the same time, the Admiral (Ian Hunter) says that the navy's new rocket can be controlled by anyone and they pick Norman to undergo a training program for the rocketry program. Can he manage to do SOMETHING right or will this, too, be a total failure?

In many ways, this film is in the tradition of Lou Costello in "Buck Privates" and Jerry Lewis in "At War With the Army". In other words, a total idiot in the service manages, eventually, to get it right. However, Norman might just be even less intelligent.

The important question is, is it funny? Well, occasionally yes...but mostly no. A few scenes go on way too long and aren't funny (such as the man overboard sequence) and a few do work better (such as when Norman becomes a deep sea diver). In other words, it's a real mixed bag. Die-hard fans will no doubt like it, whereas for others it might be a bit of a hard sell to get them to like it...if at all.

Overall, a film that is watchable and nothing more....a true time-passer. Perhaps it would have been better had I grown up watching and enjoying his Wisdom's films.

I think that I first saw this on its original Odeon release.My excuse being that I was young and impressionable at the time.I normally cannot stand Norman Wisdom films,but I did laugh a few times at this.The problem with this film is that it is very episodic and that it has been through the hands of a number of writers.Often they seem to work on the basis that if a gag is funny once why not repeat it six times.The man overboard sequence being a particularly unfunny example of this.Norman Wisdom is one of those actors whom you either like or dislike.I tend to be in the later camp so the end of this film could not come quickly enough for me.

Norman Wisdom is- in all of his films- very human. The puppy-dog eagerness, willingness to do anything set before him, ability to make a mistake and then go on to make it worse- are, of course, the very stuff of the comic character that he sets up for us to laugh at. But his genius lies in the ability to make us identify with him, to 'live the life' with him, even as we guffaw.

In the Bulldog Breed there are stock characters aplenty, and the players act their roles accordingly, but Wisdom- like a wicked imp- seems to dodge and dart round the convention & hierarchy that still- in 1960- characterized much of the English way of doing things. He is like the benign counterpart of a poltergeist: causing disruption, certainly, but not as an alien or supernatural incursion, rather a human intervention into a stiff and inhuman environment. The sequence in which he gets a whole ship's crew into the water is an excellent example of this.

One thing that often goes unremarked in Wisdom's films is the sexual presence there. There is almost always some lubricious lovely in the line-up and, in this case, Wisdom (after some other amorous adventures) ends up on the beach with a girl in a grass skirt, being told to 'carry on'. By contemporary standards what is there is so laughably little that it seems distinctly odd to regard it as 'sex interest' but, in historical context, it is definitely that, and as much a part of the humour as 'dirty postcards' were a part of the English seaside holiday of the time.

Bear in mind, by the way, that in the years running up to the first moon-landing, this film is also a comment on Britain's presence in space!