Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards are two Welsh miners who win a trip to London and two-hundred pounds. They are to be met at Paddington Station by a reporter (Alec Guiness) who will be their guide. They miss Guiness, then they lose each other in the streets. Houston picks up a young woman with designs on the prize money. Edwards runs into an old friend, Hugh Griffith, now a drunken rapscallion reduced to singing Welsh ballads and begging on corners, yearning for the harp he had to pawn two years earlier. Everyone runs around trying to catch the others, getting swept up in events along the way.
That's about it. The film tries to be more charming that humorous but its charm, like its comedy, is spare. It has a lot of good-natured energy but not too much else. When Griffith accidentally smashes his harp through a shop window, he shouts angrily, "If your rotten window has hurt my harp, you'll pay for it!" It doesn't get much funnier than that.
There's nothing wrong with the performances, the direction, or any other aspect of the production -- and there are one or two nice Welsh songs -- but whimsy is a poor substitute for plot. The Ealing comedies were best when they pitted canny rustics against bureaucratic ritualists. You could cheer for the peasants. Here, you cheer for everyone and there's no tension, no spring, behind the plot. Will they make the train home on time? It's such a small matter.
That's about it. The film tries to be more charming that humorous but its charm, like its comedy, is spare. It has a lot of good-natured energy but not too much else. When Griffith accidentally smashes his harp through a shop window, he shouts angrily, "If your rotten window has hurt my harp, you'll pay for it!" It doesn't get much funnier than that.
There's nothing wrong with the performances, the direction, or any other aspect of the production -- and there are one or two nice Welsh songs -- but whimsy is a poor substitute for plot. The Ealing comedies were best when they pitted canny rustics against bureaucratic ritualists. You could cheer for the peasants. Here, you cheer for everyone and there's no tension, no spring, behind the plot. Will they make the train home on time? It's such a small matter.