Lucky Jim

Kingsley Amis's first and best novel drew much satirical thrust from its evocation of the late 1940s, when British idealism about the socialist government elected in the first flush of World War Two victory was petering out. The ex-communist university lecturer Amis's ambiguity about putting The People in charge- later expressed in a vehement rejection of educational egalitarianism- is already implicit in this campus chronicle.

The Boulting Brothers, themselves on the left, worked "Lucky Jim" into the mildly satirical cycle of movies which made them the main successors to Ealing in the 1950s and early 1960s. But by updating it to the present and filling it with their rep company of character actors, they lost the plot.

Written by the newspaper humorist Patrick Campbell, this picturisation skates over the hypocrisy of Professor Welch and his clan as moneyed leftists-- an early depiction of limousine liberalism-- and concentrates on slapstick. Ian Carmichael, whose northern accent comes and goes, is too posh to play a grammar school lad who has blundered into the wrong profession. Terry-Thomas is too old and too T-T ("extra-ordinary fellah!") for Bertrand Welch, the spoilt son-- and why make him a novelist rather than a painter, when visual fun could have been had with his awful daubs to make up for the absence of Amis's authorial voice?

Most of the novel's heft comes from the gap between Jim Dixon's forced toadying and his secret derision, expressed in making faces and fantasising elaborate practical jokes. Little of this can get through in a script which majors on pratfalls and all-too-Britishly endorses Jim as the good guy by having the Welch's dog adopt him. And the provincial campus is too grand for the era of austerity and demobbed students Amis imagined, as though the Boultings secretly hankered to relocate the tale to Oxbridge.

All that said, there are incidental pleasures. Hugh Griffiths is spot-on as "Neddy" Welch, as is his namesake Kenneth as the creepy Evan Johns. Unexpectedly, given the initial compromises, the denouement (which was slapstick in the book too) gets closer to Amis's acrid eloquence, although drunks on screen become tiresome faster than directors realise. Interestingly in view of Amis's later problems with American publishers, the Boultings tone down the novel's misogyny. Margaret Peel is less neurotic, predatory and manipulative in the film. Jim's love object Christine, alas, is a tittering cipher on both page and screen. The British cinema wasn't doing sex in the Fifties unless it was "exposing" tarts in Soho.

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.

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.

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.

Jim Dixon works in that most protected of places – a redbrick university! However his natural laziness and clumsiness sees him forced to keep in the favour of the dull and absentminded Professor Welch in order to protect his job. With his natural affinity for bad luck, Jim struggles to find a quiet life and a unwanted romance with Margaret (the professor's friend) just make things more difficult. Things get worse when he is put in charge of organising things for the new chancellor but Welch's son arrives in the company of a beautiful young woman, Christine, who Jim finds very attractive but totally unattainable.

With people like the Boutling brothers, Carmichael and Thomas involved I was definitely going to watch this film when they showed it last week as part of the normal cycle of black & white films on daytime TV afternoons, however I must admit not to be entirely won over by this. I have not read the book on which this is based, but I am told that it is a great deal sharper than this film, not a surprise since the film surprised me by having absolutely no satirical edge to it whatsoever and instead seemed to be aiming to be a vague farce. The plot has no sharp edges to it and it only has a very basic sense of humour that involves more pratfalls than witty dialogue and, as a result, I found little here that I actually cared enough about to get into the film. The laughs weren't forthcoming, the plot was rather shallow and uninteresting and the characters were thin.

With all these problems it is no real surprise that even the talent in this cast struggle to make anything of it. Carmichael plays it all too foppish and clumsy and he never really gets a character out of the film. Even Terry Thomas seems unsure of what he is supposed to be doing with this stuff and he doesn't make any memorable impact. Acker is very pretty and Griffith is suitable cast but generally the cast are let down by the material.

Overall this is an average film that doesn't compare to the many better films that the main cast members, producer and director have all done. Usually I would say that any film with these people involved would be worth seeing but unfortunately I can say it about this outing.