Janette Scott kept me watching this very dated 1956 drama/comedy. I was pleasantly surprised to see it start in colour and full screen to fill my 65 " TV which was a plus, also that it was adapted from a story by R F Delderfield who I remembered wrote that wonderful TV serial To Serve Them All My Days. Unfortunately the comparison ends there. This slight story revolves around boy meets girl, Janette Scott was still just 17, they fall in love and due to her overbearing mother, well played by Pamela Brown, who you really want to hate, try to elope to Gretna Green. Mother hates soppy boy friend, very badly played by boring Vernon Gray, so decides to send 17 year old daughter to Canada. Just try doing that in 2020. Off the young couple go, actually Gray was 10 years older than Scott in reality, encountering various well known character actors, mostly comic, like David Lodge and Hattie Jacques, although if you blink you might miss them, which I obviously did as I saw Irene Handl's name at the end credits. There's a lovely performance from Ronald Squire as a waiter which I enjoyed the most about the film. Jack Warner, Kay Walsh, Marjorie Rhodes and Wilfred Lawson shine in their small parts. Wilfred Lawson had a reputation for filming drunk on set and I could certainly believe it here, but quite comical. If it hadn't been for the ridiculously outdated storyline of a couple making the national headlines and being persued by the rozzers just for eloping, I would have given more than 5 stars out of 10.
