Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis might not had liked the adaptation of his novel set in a redbrick university in 1950s Britain when university education started to expand and took on some working class students. The Boulting brothers film comes across a little too much of an Ealing comedy for my liking with slapstick and loses the novel's edge.

Ian Carmichael is the northern grammar school boy made good but looking for a permanent teaching job at the university. To do this he has to toady to Professor Welch and his family and every task he is entrusted to do ends in disaster sometimes due to Jim's shortcomings.

As a lecturer Jim is passionate with a leftist slant on history in contrast with Professor Welch dull and old fashioned musings which we see when Jim has to deliver Welch's lecture.

In between we have Jim getting into escapades with Terry Thomas and his Canadian girlfriend and a slapstick scene involving a parade with flowers on the quadrant of the university.

However whilst Carmichael is spirited as Jim he looks too old, even worse Terry Thomas looks too old as the son of the Professor Welch.

The film is episodic and although starts promisingly enough it tries too hard to be an Ealing style comedy rather than a satirical adaptation. The redbrick university never convinces maybe I have seen too many of these places that were built in the 1960s.

It's hard for me to be objective about this film, as it is adapted from my favorite novel--which I've read eight or nine times. Also, I waited so long to see it that it may have been inevitable that I would ultimately be disappointed. Ironically, I first heard about the film some years before I read the book, and it was only after I read the book that I made the connection between it and the description my brother had once given me. It would be about 20 years (no kidding!) before I finally saw the film myself. I've now seen it twice and mostly hated it both times.

Kingsley Amis's LUCKY JIM was obligatory reading among history students when I was in grad school 30 years ago. The story about an unhappy history instructor in a crummy British provincial university expressed a lot of the angst that we felt as grad students, and it was funnier than heck as well. I loved the book then, and still love all these years later. Why, then, was the film such a disappointment? Mainly because the script muted much of the savageness of Amis's humor, and because it tacked on an idiotic chase scene at the end that has nothing whatever to do with the original story--or even with what goes before it in the film. (Even Ian Carmichael--who played Jim--hated that ending. He told me that the people making the film didn't seem to have any idea of what they were doing--and it shows.)

The producers also added a very unsatisfactory and irrelevant academic procession in them middle of the film--evidently for the sole purpose of making Carmichael look like a klutz by having him tripping over flowerpots and dropping things in the middle of the solemn affair.

Nevertheless, the film does have its virtues, chief among them is excellent casting. Ian Carmichael was born to play Jim. Terry-Thomas was properly unctuous as Bertrand; Hugh Griffith certainly looked the part as Professor Neddy; Maureen Connell looked like I imagined the neurotic Margaret Peel; and Sharon Acker made a fine-looking Christine Callaghan.

Lucky Jim is directed by John Boulting and adapted from the Kingsley Amis novel of the same name. It stars Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Hugh Griffith, Sharon Acker and Jean Anderson.

A Redbrick university In Britain's New Elizabethan Age: Here Are Moulded The Intellectual Drakes And Raleighs Of Tomorrow-Fearless, Independent- -

And State Supported!

Enter Carmichael's accident prone Jim Dixon, who in order to keep his job at the University has to do the bidding for Griffith's dull Professor Welch. Worse still, maybe, is having to spend time with his boorish family, especially the Son, pompous show off Bertrand (Thomas). Salvation may come in the form of Bertrand's companion, though, Christine Callaghan (Acker)?

I haven't read the Amis novel this is based on, so can't have frame of reference there. By all accounts it's very different, and staunch Amis supporters are very dismissive of the Boulting movie. The film itself is hardly prime Boullting Brothers, who would produce British classics such as Brighton Rock and I'm All Right Jack, but it has a number of funny scenes whilst also being nicely flecked with satirical flavouring. Carmichael attacks the lead role with gusto and comic affability, while "scary eyebrows" Griffith and Terry-Thomas provide good comedy footings for Carmichael to work from. The ladies are pretty and effective enough, without really doing anything any other British actress of the time couldn't have done, but all told it's a well acted and genial time filler for the undemanding. 6.5/10

Fans of Kingsley Amis's brilliant novel might with justification hate this adaptation, but taken on its own terms, it is an enjoyable slice of 'fifties British comedy. While the novel's bite may have been lost, the movie's troubled production history (a few weeks into the filming, the original director, Ealing's Charles Crichton, was replaced) fails to show on the finished film.

Ian Charmichael is at his best in this movie. The combination of a (realistic) Northern accent, plus a slightly harder edged characterisation, helps distance him from his usual 'silly ass' image. Perhaps he isn't the Dixon of the book, but it is a fair attempt. A first rate cast adds to the fun, in particular a small but perfectly formed cameo by Terry-Thomas steals the movie.

The final chase is, as been noted, the movie's weakest link (it seems to come out of nowhere and does not fit in with the rest of the film) and is it fair from being the best Amiss adaptation (that honour belongs to the wonderful 'Only Two Can Play'). But despite these flaws, it remains a watch able enough movie.

This is an outstanding movie whose meticulously-crafted set pieces frequently had me in stitches. Superbly cast, Ian Carmichael, Hugh Griffiths and Terry-Thomas were in exceptional form, and the luminous beauty of Sharon Acker lights up the film. If you don't find this funny, charming and uplifting, all I can say is that I feel sorry for you!

The pompous, stiff and class-deferential era of the 1950s is marvellously evoked in this movie. Always the sign of a classic, even the minor characters - Mrs Welch, the taxi driver, the waiter and the university porter, for instance - all hold their own and come across as real people. The appalling persona of Bertrand Welch (Terry-Thomas) with his self-obsessed sense of his own importance is excellently drawn. One to see and quite possibly one to keep.