Lovely scenery and color photography can't save this tedious and annoying film that's filled with irritating characters and bad pacing.
The film starts out well with Harry Corbett and Ronnie Barker taking a commercial load on their barge via the wondrous waterways (canals) to Birmingham. Despite Corbett's off-putting accent and speech impediment (he can't say his R's), it looks like it will be a picturesque comedy/drama set amid the English countryside. But as soon as Eric Syke's annoying character (the mariner), the week-end skipper who knows nothing about boats, shows up, the voyage goes off course.
Sykes is supposed to be the comic relief, but his character is too stupid to be funny. Anyway, Corbett plots his trip with "stop-overs" at various towns where he has a woman in each port. He finally makes it to where Julia Foster and her dad, Hugh Griffith, live. She's pregnant, and the story goes off in another direction with Griffith determined to find the guy who knocked her up.
This plot drags on and on with Griffith blocking the canal and causing all sorts of trouble until some government officials show up and they finally figure out who daddy is. Even after this resolution, the story drags on til its obvious conclusion.
Griffith, Foster, and Barker do what they can with one-dimensional characters. Sykes and Corbett are lost causes. Co-stars include Miriam Karlin as the boisterous Nellie, Norman Bird and Richard Briers as the government men, Derek Nimmo as the dumb doctor, and among the canal women, Rita Webb, Patricia Hayes, and Eileen Way.
