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1964-02-11
N/A
91 min
When Dexter Munro and his new wife Juliet get married, they decide to escape Juliet's meddling father by buying a rundown cottage and doing it up themselves. But when the cottage proves to be more ramshackle than they thought, and the scale of the repairs needed far out of their budget, the newlyweds are forced into calling on Juliet's father after all. Before long he's employed incompetent builder Josh Wicks, and the situation goes from bad to worse.
I think this might be described as a film that didn't quite realise the sum of it's parts. A strong British comedy line up, but a rather thin plot and comedy that bordered just a bit too much on slapstick for my liking. "Sally" (Julie Munro) and "Dexter" (Stanley Baxter) are newlyweds trying to - thriftily - do up their rather ramshackle cottage that they bought from "Chipfield" (Leslie Philips). Enter her father, the wealthy and somewhat domineering "Sir Beverley" who imposes himself on the young couple - and on their wily builders - with predictably disastrous results. It is probably half an hour too long this, the jokes are there but you can see the punchlines from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Characterful, though - there is some chemistry on screen and a host of well-known faces (many from history!) keep the film moving along OK from one set-piece to the next. You might not recall watching it shortly afterwards, but it's an amusing enough 90 minutes that reminds you of the old adage - "nobody over 50 ought ever to go up a ladder!"
