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Summer Holiday [1963]

Starring: Una Stubbs, Ron Moody, Cliff Richard, Lauri Peters
Director: Peter Yates
Format: Anamorphic PAL
Released: 26 Feb 2007
RRP: £12.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable and nice to watch as document of an era - By: P-M-R, 18 Mar 2008
Launched just months before Beatlemania took its toll (in February 1963), this musical film clearly shows that efforts to keep UK teens tied to their hitherto idols were completely in vain at this stage. Despite being at his early 20s, Cliff Richard already belongs to the previous era & is not able to keep inspiring the mass audience in longer perspective (apart from the one strongly "Congratulations"-oriented). While there are still a few catchy tunes included in the score (title one or "Bachelor Boy", both big hits in weeks after the premiere & both backed by the Shadows), the rest is completely "inconsistent" with Richard's earlier musical profile & suspended somewhere between the waltz, vaudeville & reminiscences of more "jazzy" parts of "West Side Story" (thus much far from what has already become the "mainstream" teen demand)

Having considered above, we can still watch this movie with some pleasure, as a kind of document of an era of "innocent youth", long gone by. The pleasure will not be much spoilt by totallly stupid screenplay (being a part of the game in this type of productions), Richard's poor acting abilities (more or less Elvis Presley's "Hawaii series" level) & choreography remaining only a pale shadow of dance-song integration standards achieved many years earlier in MGM, 20th Century Fox or Warner's classics (though of course being still a kind of novelty in British & European film musicals)

Emphasised should be that the film was carefully transferred on DVD, with original widescreen aspect ratio retained & quite good sound (though in mono). A minus remains lack of any "special features" added.