The Huggetts Abroad (1949) User Reviews

Refreshingly stereotypical

[Spondonman · 7/10 · 27 May 2005]

A charming, sentimental, simple tale of a charming, sentimental, simple British suburban family who would like to escape from the post WW2 austerity programme in operation. And Dad had lost his job too. To execute this escape they decide to drive over Africa to South Africa in a 2nd hand truck with a paying Canadian guest who has a rather dark secret in his oil powered refrigerator.

Jack Warner as Dad and Kathleen Harrison as Mum were perfectly cast Cockney stereotypes, the kids and Jimmy Hanley were excellent role models too. Everyone and everything, the story, production and acting is old fashioned and mind-numbingly ordinary - I've always loved this film! 83 minutes to switch off thinking and let it flow. If you do it's amazing just how believable the plot and people really are, even when Pet Clark bursts into song. Her second song was pleasant, yet it was rudely interrupted by a nasty piece of work complaining about the row.

This was the 4th and final Huggett film, but the family were revived by BBC radio from 1953 to 1962, at its peak getting more than 10 million weekly listeners. As the other films are never shown on UK TV nowadays I presume they've been banned by the Department of Political Correctness. I'm not surprised it didn't win any prizes at the time, but it's a nice little film.

Johannesburg here we come

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 30 January 2016]

The third film concerning the Huggett family has them in all kinds of problems. Jack Warner has lost his job and his son-in-law can't get passage for his wife Dinah Sheridan and himself to South Africa where a job awaits. So the whole Huggett clan, Warner, Kathleen Harrison, Hanley and Sheridan and the two other daughters Susan Shaw and Petula Clark decide to move bag and baggage to South Africa.

Here's what I don't get. For some reason they decide that it might be cheaper and faster to go overland from Algiers to Johannesburg and that's over 4000 miles through some nasty country, not all of it a colony of the United Kingdom. It seems so preposterous it's the reason I can't give The Huggetts Abroad a higher rating.

They also get some assistance from Hugh McDermott who has his own reasons for wanting to get out of Great Britain quickly and quietly.

With these British city folk in the Sahara desert The Huggetts Abroad is far more serious than the two previous Huggett films. If it weren't for the black and white I'd swear I was watching scenes from Legend Of The Lost.

Best part of the film is Petula Clark's singing. Before she became an international pop star in the 60s with Downtown she was a Deanna Durbin/Judy Garland like child star in the UK. Voice like Garland's a little Miss Fixit personality like Durbin's. But very pleasing to listen to.

Huggett Family fans of which there are many should like this one despite the impracticality of the premise.

Rank flog Huggett series to death

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 24 January 2012]

The Huggetts originally appeared in Holiday Camp.then there were 3 sequels in a mini series of which not surprisingly this was the last.The point of the Huggetts was the fact of their ordinariness.they could have been the neighbours of the cinema-goers.however when you took them out of their suburban surroundings and put them in exotic locations then the charm wears off.whats more the limits of the budget are openly on view for all to see.It is quite clear that doubles are being used on the location shots and that virtually all of the desert scenes featuring the actors are being shot in the studios.Indeed so risible are the desert scenes that you half expect John mills to appear from the horizon driving the ambulance from Ice Cold in Alex followed by a German tank.I presume that the idea of diamonds being hidden in an ice compartment was supposed to be a joke.the plot is just so silly that it is no surprise that the film series stopped here.However taken back to suburbia where they belonged then they were able to get a further 10 years on the BBC light programme just after the Billy Cotton band Show about 2pm on a Sunday afternoon.By the way it is believed that the street shots for the Huggetts home were taken in Oakhampton Avenue in Mill Hill North West London.

The Huggetts on Safari

[richardchatten · 6/10 · 25 August 2019]

The title of the last gasp of the Huggett series (Gainsborough Pictures itself soon followed later the same year) lead me to expect comic frolics abroad like 'Carry On Abroad', but it turns out to be a fairly rugged adventure film, albeit constructed around the Huggett family, with actual desert footage directed by editor Alan Osbiston surprisingly effectively integrated with studio-shot scenes of the Huggetts themselves. (Did emigrants to South Africa really get there in the late forties by trekking across the Sahara?)

Esma Cannon, who was murdered in the original 'Holiday Camp', surprisingly pops up briefly in a completely different role in this film as Petula Clark's scoutmistress.

Fourth and final movie in the series.

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 28 September 2017]

SYNOPSIS: The Huggetts decide to travel overland from Algiers to Johannesburg where Jimmy has the offer of a job. They need one extra passenger to help pay expenses. Naturally, they UNWITTINGLY settle on a diamond smuggler.

NOTES: Fourth and last of the Huggett series. The others: Holiday Camp, Vote for Huggett and Here Come the Huggetts. In this one Jane Hylton was unable to take up her usual part because of illness. She was replaced by Jimmy Hanley's real-life wife at that time, Dinah Sheridan. Yes, Dinah Sheridan who finally broke through into the big-time with Genevieve (1953) which didn't do her any good because her new husband forced her to give up her career. She never forgave him, although she did re-surface in "The Railway Children" (1971).

In an elaborate Foreword, the producers are at pains to point out that the Huggetts in the movie bear no relationship to Mr. Vane Huggett and his family who made a similar trek across Africa. The credits are also remarkably precise about the script. All four writers apparently worked in tandem.

COMMENT: This final sequel to "Holiday Camp" is better than you might expect. Some of the dialogue is genuinely amusing and as it springs from and aids characterization, it fits snugly into what is on the whole a dramatic context. Actual locations were directed by a film editor so that they fit with extraordinary smoothness and aptness into the studio-shot scenes which are betrayed only by the use of a process screen.

The cast, led by Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison, is for the most part very capable. Susan Shaw makes a satisfactory heroine, though her clothes do little for her. Petula Clark provides a couple of pleasant songs. Ken Annakin's direction is professionally competent. Reginald Wyer's photography tends to be flat and dim, but production values generally are for a "B"-feature, surprisingly high. (Needless to say, the film was released as an "A" production in the U.K.)

AN UPDATED VIEW: Despite their solid family values and working class virtues, it's hard to beam up a lot of enthusiasm for the Huggetts. They're just too realistic, far too acutely accurate reflections of your average suburban picture-goers. Why pay good money to see yourself and your neighbors on the screen? Nonetheless, people did. The movie returned its production costs – but it was a narrow squeak. Very credibly acted too, in sets and surroundings that are only too familiar. Doubtless that's why the decision was taken to send these characters abroad. But they're still the self-same Huggetts, their British ideals painted in even sharper and firmer colors against these more exotic backgrounds.

Very little time for foolery in this one, though Pet Clark does take a few minutes out for a couple of songs. Otherwise the emphasis is more on drama than comedy as our adventurers battle against all the traditional perils of the desert, including sandstorms, thirst, corrupt and ignorant officialdom, lack of petrol, a faulty compass, sabotage, thieves, traitors in the midst, romance, rescue — and the French.

Rather slow nostalgia trip

[chrisandsere · 3/10 · 13 August 2001]

If you remember the Huggets then probably this film is for you. It follows the family attempting to escape from austerity England to South Africa, and getting caught up in some diamond smuggling along the way.

The plot is paper thin (so much so that it almost disappears at one point), and the direction moves in fits and starts, but if you're feeling nostalgic for the days when we believed in the stereotypes for foreigners because we had no experience to teach us better, then you'll like this. Interestingly enough, the only out and out baddie in the film is another Englishman - even the Canadian diamond smuggler is a lovable rogue.

The film is made palatable for me, however, by Jack Warner, who despite playing more or less the same character as his subsequent Dixon of Dock Green (and The Blue Lamp) police sergeant, exudes an irresistible avuncular warmth, and Pet Clark, whose bubbly performance helps raise the rest of the family out of the mire that an uninspired screenplay tries to put them. She also gets to sing, though you'd never believe this little girl is the same as she who sang Downtown.

The Huggetts Abroad review

[JoeytheBrit · 6/10 · 14 May 2020]

The decision to take the Huggetts out of their natural habitat and dump them in the African desert was misguided enough to spell disaster for the series. The usually light-hearted nature of the films is also abandoned for this tale of diamond smuggling in which Pa Huggett and his prospective son-in-law undertake an arduous trek across the desert when supplies run short. It's watchable enough, but lacks the spirit of the other movies in the series.

A disappointment considering the first

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 8 September 2018]

THE HUGGETTS ABROAD is a direct follow on from the first Huggetts vehicle HOLIDAY CAMP, although sadly a far cry from the quality of that movie. Hazel Court doesn't return either, which is a shame, although the rest of the cast come back for more mishaps and adventures. This time around they randomly decide to pick up sticks and head off to South Africa, bizarrely choosing to trek through the inhospitable desert lands of the north in order to get there instead of just taking a direct flight like most people. Character interplay is the name of the day here, alongside some drawn-out shenanigans with obvious villains and the like. It's all rather slow and tired, more like a WW2 movie than a comedy, and it comes as little surprise that no more of these were made.

The Huggetts Abroad

[CinemaSerf · 5/10 · 4 January 2023]

Easily the most far-fetched outing for our stoical post-war British family, this one sees them embark on a trans-African trip after "Father" (Jack Warner) loses his job and "Jimmy" (Jimmy Hanley) manages to get himself one - in Johannesburg. Needless to say, they haven't two farthings to rub together, and when poor old daughter "Jane" (Dinah Sheridan) can't get a visa to accompany her husband the whole family (with varying degrees of willingness) decide to decamp - by truck - and drive the 4,000-odd miles. Luckily (or not) they have the slightly iffy character of "Bob" (Hugh McDermott) to help (?) them so off they go. It's preposterous, from start to finish - even if back then, Britain still controlled great chunks of Africa. The comedy is absurd and the normally reliable leadership of Warner and on-screen wife Kathleen Harrison is subsumed into an almost episodic lesson in rather poorly written and executed slapstick. The charm and cheeriness of these films was always their selling point. This has neither, really, and at 90 minutes is far too long, too.

Great family entertainment

[j-p-collins95 · 9/10 · 19 November 2022]

Cracking,lightning right cross from 'Dixon of Dock Green' Jack Warner. See, violence! Oooh. The things you miss when you're far from Blighty! Jack's character missed his local. I sympathise + I miss pub Sunday roast lunches. Sufficient tension. A bit of innocent romance. Bit of sculduggery. Some répugnant people to hiss at. And you're sure it's going to end happily ever after. But is it? Well, you'll just have to watch, won't you!

OMG, review rejected for being too short! They want a bloody 600 word (well, character) essay. Yeah, if i'm being paid, but this is done out of the kindness of my heart in support of Talking Pictures TV, as I watch the followup Jack Warner/ Jimmy Hanley duo 1949 fillum,'The Blue Lamp', for which I will NOT bother to review because I'd like to watch it, thank you very much.

There you have it, my last review. Not that it will be published.