Espiões e Foliões

I saw this film just the once, when it first came out and I was in my teens. I remember it being on a par with Cliff's other films - enjoyable, colourful, escapist nonsense, enhanced with some good songs.

But what has happened to it? The Young Ones, Summer Holiday, and Wonderful Life have all featured regularly on British TV and have had video and DVD releases, yet Finders Keepers has disappeared almost without trace (this is also true of Cliff's subsequent films Take Me High and Two A Penny, but they weren't musicals: Finders Keepers is.

The film's songs are all good. Written by the Shadows, they are mostly cheerful and plot-relevant, and they include the haunting This Day, a ballad performed while boating through subterranean caverns, I think. The soundtrack is well worth a listen.

Personally, I'd welcome an opportunity to see the darn thing again.

Addition: I have acquired a somewhat under the radar DVD of Finders Keepers - dubbed from an off-air VHS taping, I suspect. The songs are, indeed, all very good. The rest of the film, alas, is not. The plot is ludicrous, the script is poor, people behave in all sorts of illogical ways, and even the British comedy stalwarts are ill-treated by what they are given to do (I never thought I would report that John Le Mesurier wasn't very good but, sadly, it is so). And the editing of the climactic musical number is shambolic.

It's now available as a "legitimate" DVD and comes up sparkling. The plot's not up to much but the photography and art direction are excellent and there are a few laughs. It doesn't compare with The Dave Clark Five in the earlier Catch Us If You Can, which has better songs and, despite a much lower budget, a real sense of purpose.

This film was lame and I should have known it would be a drag from the opening scene. The band is on a hay wagon railroad car and the footage and special effects are horrible. None of songs by the band stand out and the plot is weak. Robert Morley is one of those actors who always seems to always find his way into bad films.

You get what you expect to get with this film, Cliff and The Shadows, and a bevy of beauties for them to hook up with, bursting into song and dance at regular intervals.

Nicely shot in glorious colour although none of the tunes stick in the mind for long after being heard. The musical, or should that be alleged musical, that I reviewed before this was "La La Land" and this film is vastly superior to that mess of a film.

An enjoyable romp with the boys in nice scenery and for this type of film the plot is not too silly. A worthwhile watch from days sadly long gone by, just a bit of innocent fun which has not existed in films for some time now.

I can't bear to give Cliff Richard less than a 6 - I refuse.

"Finders Keepers" from 1966 is another film for Cliff's fans. He and the Shadows, playing themselves, go to a job and find the hotel deserted. An atom bomb has been dropped by mistake into the ocean and until it's found, no tourists, no fishing, no nothing. At the hotel there are spies and agents who want to find the bomb for their own purposes.

You want to talk about a bare bones plot, there it is. Cliff Richard is absolutely adorable. Over here in the States, we were all very busy with Beatlemania and the rest of the British invasion - for some reason, Cliff never caught on over here, though he was certainly popular everywhere else. Just one of those odd things - possibly the press claiming he was the British Elvis is what did it, as we had the original.

Richard is nothing like Elvis, of course. Too clean-cut, boyish, and wholesome, and though he could take on an Elvis style, his actual style was smooth and bright. No one just filmed him from the waist up, broke his records, or talked against him in church pulpits.

Here he and the Shadows perform with lots of energy, though the songs maybe aren't great. And they do stupid antics that the kids probably got a kick out of.

It's nowhere near as good as "A Hard Day's Night," and probably this film is best compared to one of Elvis' travelogues - beautiful scenery, some music, a cute guy and pretty women.

Richard just tried to be himself in these films, and that was more than enough. I think Presley deserved better films - he was more sexual and more intense. But for Cliff and the Shadows, while not as good as earlier films, this is a pleasant watch.