Raising the Wind

A group of students at an elite music school decide to share a flat in order to cut their living costs and have somewhere to practice together. They get into quite a few scraps and adventures, including impersonating a celebrity quintet. However when Mervyn Hughes accidentally sells a catchy pop tune to an advertising agency he risks losing his scholarship unless he and his friends can raise the money to buy the rights back.

With an impressive sounding Carry-On cast featuring quite a few famous names from British comedy I was quite looking forward to this being a gently amusing little piece. Sadly I was fooled and this film turned out to be as weak and unfunny as you can imagine. The plot sees some of the oldest students I've seen sharing a flat; from here the plot has a few adventures, before splitting to be about Hughes' drunken mistakes and Malcolm's attempts to win a conducting prize. None of it really engages and, more importantly, none of it is ever really funny.

It's a shame cause you can see what they are trying to do, but none of it works and the talented cast are left high and dry without anything that is more than sporadically funny. Phillips does his usual stuff but he isn't that good; Fraser is cast as a dream girl but I have never found her looks to be worthy of that sort of role. The rest of the students seem quite bland and unmemorable - making it hard to care. Justice is OK and has good screen presence and the support cast includes cameos from James, Williams and Dale but they don't do much.

Overall this is a pretty big disappointment. The plot doesn't engage but that wouldn't matter if I'd laughed at least once or twice - but I didn't. A talented cast may draw viewers to this film but I can guarantee that they won't be enough to keep you watching. A real shame - puts paid to the idea that British comedy of the period could do no wrong.