Our family watched this on Wednesday evening. Irene, 11, who watched it with a big grin, and the frequent observation “It’s just like Charlie Chaplin.” The rest of us were less enamoured.
Zoe and Roy were irritated and bored, and kept saying, “Let’s turn it off,” “Let’s not throw away good time after bad.” Zoe–“It’s not improving my French.”
I was intensely irritated at first, not having read Bosley Crowther’s review, “There is really no story to the picture.”
It was slapstick, the point being to empathize with the inevitable misadventures of a well-meaning, courteous, accident-prone gent. The characters were all stereotypes, which added to the merriment.
I couldn’t help laughing at the snooty proprietors and waiters. It reminded me why I hate to stay in family-owned pensiones. And the hearty English woman.
It took me a while to get into the slapstick humour, though by the movie’s end, I was laughing as heartily as Irene, while Roy and Zoe were still tolerating it
Read my new memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India (US) or UK.
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My book of essays: Wandering Between Two Worlds (US) or UK