Come Back Peter

To receive 1 star from some reviewers, is ridiculous. This puts it in the same category as 2008's Disaster Movie, which is very unfair. The Movie is based on a play by all accounts and this is telling. The story is simple and of its time. It contains very few 'stars', it's pleasant, but dont expect Oscar worthy material. The acting is proficient, and the ensemble contains a future Miss Marple, albeit briefly. The story is quite dull and doesn't deserve much more than a six, but I just don't see how anyone could give the film a lower score unless they were watching a different film! Have the one star reviewers even seen Sharknado 5?? Zut alors.

Kathleen Boutall, Peter Hammond, and Patrick Holt are the only players to return in this sequel to 1948's FLY AWAY, PETER. Charles Lamb has retired, and all the children have gone, so they purchase a small cottage in the suburbs just big enough for two people on pension. Whereupon all the children return, along with sundry spouses, two babies, a friend, and the inevitable Great Dane. There are crowding problems. There are money problems. There's a clueless husband whose secretary, Aud Johansen, is trying to seduce him and succeeding through his cluelessness.

Lamb and Miss Boutall handle the domestic chaos equably enough, but in the postwar world, youngsters are always ambitious, and Lamb has overpromised financial help, which triggers another near crisis, which will, the audience can be assured, will be sorted out. For this is the bright new Britain, where all problems are solvable and love, care and forgiveness are the means of doing it. The result is a movie that is a trifle, trading on the property it claims to be a sequel of, thanks to a screenplay and direction by Charles Saunders.

It's fair to say that this isn't a classic, but aside from a lame misunderstanding routine at the estate agents office early on, this film is perfectly fine. The camerawork is good - theres a nice little opening shot of the village and consistently skilled use of a small interior for most of the film - and everything else is done well; for once, a 'small' house in a film actually looks small.

The whole thing is reasonably amusing and a nice piece of entertainment; you'd have to be a bit grumpy not to appreciate the gentle humour and old-fashioned charm. This certainly deserves a higher rating.

A brash and loud comedy that I struggled to watch in the early hours of the morning. I had insomnia and both a screaming baby and a dog as big as a hound in the film made sure that I would survive on a few hours sleep. An aging couple ( by 1952 standards ) downsize and move into a small house. They do this because they never see their four adult children. Within almost minutes the whole brood descend on the house and then slapstick, vague sex references and poor dialogue take over. For some reason I like British films of this period but this one almost made me change my mind. I may be wrong but I feel it must have been a poor programme filler. I have nothing against this as it kept actors in work, and the UK made many of them, and some were good films and worth remembering. It may still appeal to some, but in all honesty definitely not for me.

Yet another film made in the original austerity Britain that modern viewers will find only too familiar today. This lively sequel to 'Fly Away Peter' (1948) - with more exteriors and which even employs split-screen a couple of times - serves as a useful corrective to all those other British movies made at the time set in houses the size of Blenheim.

As the chicks that had originally flown the nest return to the much smaller home their parents now occupy, a 21st Century audience will find the cramped existence the Hapgoods now find thrust upon them - like being forced to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs (how any homes even have one of those these days?), not to mention money worries - only too familiar nearly seventy years later.