7/10
The Kiss!
4 July 2004
I don't quite know why, but this is one of my favourite George Formby films. I mean, the experts would have us believe they were all the same anyway, same plot, same characters, same scenes, same production and even the same song. So this shouldn't be any different from the rest but somehow is, so I'm afraid that I can't make the grade as Critic.

Fake money is being passed and so on their own initiative George and Gus go off in pursuit of the perps, at first in the wrong direction to pad the film out a bit, but eventually get on the right track. On the way George gets to mime along to 3 songs (the best being the especially salacious Fanlight Fanny sung to the 2 highly amused kitchen staff), slide down innumerable bannisters, is chased back and forth by either goodies or baddies etc, all without a moments let-up. Googie Withers was an extremely demure and decorative assistant, who should have played a much larger part had Beryl allowed. But George still managed to get to give her a kiss! Garry Marsh and Ronald Shiner were there as usual in sterling (genuine) support.

What a race were the pre-WW2 English (it's not allowed anymore to call the English a race in PC UK) as portrayed in Formby's films. It took the demobbed soldiers at the end of the War to finally put an end to this kind of harmless nonsense, in favour of more realism.

Give me escapism any day!
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