Last time I saw this was 1972 and it was dated badly even by then, now it might as well portray life on another planet. A planet that is very appealing! The British working class long ago got more spare cash in their pockets to skedaddle off to more distant sunnier shores for their 2 weeks a year. Instead back then they had 1 week in an enormous regimented boot camp under dull skies, packed like sardines into shared chalets. Every picture frame must have at least 20 people in it.
The first Huggetts film has the family off to Farleigh Holiday Camp, where various little stories unfold about the guests good bad and sad, a more down to Earth Grand Hotel if you like. Jack Warner as Dad and Kathleen Harrison as Ma (who definitely hadn't got 8 eyes like an octopus) were perfectly ordinary straight folk with no side with 2 grown up kids - decidedly, in Hazel Court's case - all of them excellent and stereotypical role models for the viewers. And what's wrong with that in these days where only the seedy and vicious are held in esteem in movies? Jimmy Hanley was an ideal beau for the daughter, young War widow Huggett, an uncomplicated young man bent on pleasure but straight as a die. Unsurprisingly Good won out in all the threads, although in Dennis Price's and Esme Cannon's case it was a melancholic and ambiguously puzzling end.
It was filmed in the hellishly cold (Warner's words) studio at Lime Grove during the big freeze of '47, something to bear in mind when watching everyone sunning themselves. For a glimpse into a totally dead Britain, unbeatable. Also an entertaining 94 minutes for those like me who aren't serious or researching for their University dissertations about life in post-War Britain.
