Wonderful Life

Cult Film-maker Sidney J. Furie's epically eccentric, fabulously far-flung and marvellous musical comedy remains a riotous, sun-drenched seaside spectacular, positively teaming with warmly-fuzzy holiday romance vibes, exotic excitements, fleet-footed dancing delirium, unbound youthful high spirits and sublime slapstick silliness! This is Cliff Richard as you've NEVER seen him before, unless, er, you HAVE seen him like this before, natch!!!! In these increasingly rum times, unrepentantly joyous filmic fripperies like 'Wonderful Life' (1964) provide a most welcome and divinely titillating, mood-raising tonic! The charismatic actor Walter Slezak is on especially fine form, and the devastatingly luminous screen siren Susan Hampshire is ALWAYS a rare feast for the eyes!

About half-way to two-thirds through this movie the kids get a crazy idea: "Let's make a movie!" Don't ask me why. Let's just say it's a cue for the only inspired bit in the flick: the kids get into costume and put on a shticky little history of the movies from The Little Tramp to James Bond. And even then the best parts are Susan Hampshire impersonating - in order - Ginger Rogers, Greta Garbo, Shirley Temple, Betty Grable, a Jet (not a Jet Girl - a Jet!) and a Bond Girl.

Someday, when Hampshire's doing a T.V. interview, somebody should throw these bits on screen and get her reaction. It should be priceless.

A truly nonsenscial muscial comedy, it's nevertheless Cliff Richard's best in the musical genre. ( He did a couple of dramatic films which were his best) A rather bland singer competing with his similar American counterparts Elvis Presley and Frankie Avalon, Richards fared no better than they in comedy and musical scripts. This one at least contains Susan Hampshire and Walter Slezak. What makes this movie so entertaining is the zippy pace and the surprisingly great dancing and choreography. The big dance number on the set by the whole crew is spectacular and rivals "West Side Story". Incidentally, the long-legged Richards keeps right up with the rest of them and does even better at it than his singing! The cute little send-up of the history of the movies is also very entertaining.

Not acknowledged as such, but probably the best of Sir Cliff's early sixties big screen vehicles; although even he dismissed it as "a disaster from the word go".

It has a witty script, choreography by Gillian Lynne performed by a young and enthusiastic cast, quirky little touches such as Gerald Harper cropping up in different supporting roles. And of course there's that wonderful potted history of the movies.

Guest stars Susan Hampshire and Walter Slezak are both well used; with Miss Hampshire cutting a far more provocative figure slouching from the waves in a bikini pastiching Ursula Andress in 'Dr. No' than Andress did in the original.

A great bit of sixties psychedelia, somewhat reminiscent of Barbarella and the original Casino Royale film. This is fun to watch if you leave your brain at home. For example, one minute they're dancing in a formal ball and the next they're dressed as cowboys or Hawaiian dancers - not only that but one second they're in the desert and the next on a boat pretending to be pirates! The songs were catchy and fun too, and one of them contained the worst rhyme I've ever heard, rhyming 'arabi', a made-up word were meant to imagine means 'Arabia' with 'be' - this only works if we change the word AND the stress AND the pronunciation!