Take Me High

Glad Amazon doesn't require enormous review length any more, since this review doesn't need it. Awful British movie industry fodder at its worst. The sound for everything outdoors is looped and audience for this, even in 1973, would be whom? No one I knew. Richard successfully bucked this stuff about 3 years later with his "I'm Nearly Famous" album when he realized his career was tanking. The Brumberger song takes the biscuit.

OK so it's Cliff in flares in Birmingham but this film has a charm all it's own. The soundtrack is brilliant, these songs are very good and the storyline is refreshing in that it's based in England. Anthony Andrews and Hugh Griffiths are great and Cliff is, well, Cliff!

Watch it enough times and you'll soon have your favourite scenes, lines and even songs. The moral is still relevant today - money and the pursuit of real happiness. There are some good actors in this and George Cole is superb as a hardbitten socialist. Cliff has some great outfits in this, truly 100% 1973 gear and it's an interesting snapshot of life in this country all those years ago. I'd like to add that Gas Street IS in the middle of Birmingham - we did the map fold!!!!!

This is not the best known of Cliff Richard's films, but personally I like it very much. Cliff plays an ambitious young businessman helping a girl who lives on a narrow-boat to start her own restaurant. Deborah Watling is charming as the young chef, and George Cole and Hugh Griffith provide strong comic support, with Anthony Andrews suitably suave as Cliff's rival. The songs are good, especially the title song Take Me High. The most striking thing about the film though is the Birmingham location, i don't think there are many films set in Birmingham, and I imagine very few musicals, possibly this film is unique in that respect. Birmingham is not the most picturesque of cities, but this film shows it in quite an attractive light, especially the canal scenes. Altogether this is a charming film.

While his 60s films fit in with the juvenile delinquent and teenage beach movies of the time, this one keeps up with those fans who were now in their 20s. Another romantic comedy with a memorable music score and set in the UK's second city, Cliff now has an office job but he's still a bachelor.

It would be a dozen years before Cliff would do the Dave Clark musical TIME in the West End (no longer in the office but a rock star) followed 10 years later by his version of Wuthering Heights. The musical Heathcliff was a life-long ambition of Cliff's (and he played the married, then widowed seriously misunderstood man quite well). TIME was never released in video format but Heathcliff was. Take Me High is also available on video. His voice only got better, so you can't go wrong with any of these releases.

This is the sort of film to watch in a crowd with a cruel sense of humour. Can you imagine a travelogue of Birmingham? With musical numbers? You don't have to, because TMH does it for you. The song that stays with me to this day is 'Brumburger!'. Really, if Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder hadn't got 'Springtime For Hitler', 'Take Me High' would have done the trick. Beyond kitsch, beyond parody, beyond belief.