Snowball

A British New Wave/Kitchen Sink drama involving how fate works... not the first or last... and SNOWBALL is set in some pretty nice weather, so the title's about gossip gaining momentum...

And all because of child actor Dennis Waterman as an English suburban kid who shares to his parents and a neighbor how a bus driver dumped him off: having to walk home four miles... the last stretch of that seemingly breezy stride opening the movie with credits shown...

So it's not very difficult for the audience to realize the kid's a liar, making this a melodrama without much mystery: although SNOWBALL has many elements of the latter, including a cub reporter trying to get to the bottom of things, wishboned between his editors and the bus company...

But the true main character is the kid's mom, pretty British actress Zena Walker in one of many friendly mom or wife roles... here she's married to strict husband/father Gordon Williams, and the sparse realism into their seemingly typical household circumstance both literally and symbolically represents the Kitchen Sink aspect...

Meanwhile on the outskirts, yet technically holding the most significance, is a British character-actor who usually plays troubled, mousy sorts: Yet Kenneth Griffith has a wife as faithful and even similarly down-home-pretty as the central family in an ironical juxtaposition that's somewhat intriguing...

If only there were more stakes raised for the kid, played by Waterman, who, despite being a great child actor (before becoming an adult who'd never not have a hit TV series), seems to basically care less about pretty much anything and everything all along.

Zena Walker is worried, she tells husband Gordon Jackson. Their son, Dennis Waterman, isn't home yet. Jackson says he's probably out with his fiends. When Waterman gets home, he says the driver kicked him off. Miss Walker tells people, and local busybodies get involved, and soon a reporter from the local paper is following the story. The driver says he has no memory of the incident, and insists he would never kick a child off. But the affair starts to snowball.

It's an engaging little movie directed by Pat Jackson from a novel by James Lake, very low key at first, but gradually growing in tension and anguish. Highly recommended.

Waterman died this year at the age of 74.

One shouldn't be surprised that this film should be so good bearing in mind that it was directed by Pay Jackson. A great performance from Kenneth Griffith's,not his usual mannered villain. Three couples all adversely affected by the complaining letter written by an unthinking neighbour.

A good film to show young people!

This film concentrates on a young boy who has a tendency to tell fibs. There are serious issues contained in this movie, not only child lies, but the way the press and a person's peers can treat an innocent person, going only on the word of a child.

Basically, this film is about how a childs simple lie can have repercussions beyond the mis-spending of a sixpence, and lead to things no one wanted, or expected.

Waterman and Jackson are great and show the acting skills that would later make them both excellent TV actors.

The film could do with an upgrade, as it still carries an important message.

8 out of 10.

I recently caught this film on talking pictures having never seen it before. Top cast included an eleven year old but clearly recognisable Dennis Waterman as a schoolboy who turns up at home very late from school. On being asked where he's been he blames a bus conductor for Turning him off the bus for not having a ticket. A nosy neighbour writes to the papers and before long it all snowballs out of control with the conductor who was pow in the war hounded by all. Now I expected a typical period drama all cosy and nice, I got a surprise... Dennis is very good as the boy and his parents Gordon Jackson. And Zena walker are similarly good. This is a morality tale of what can happen to the nicest of people when we don't think, as the title says,... things 'snowball' An excellent and unsuspected film.