I suspect that director Jeremy Summers is a TV man, and sure enough I see that he has done a substantial amount of work for television. You can always tell these guys because few of them realize that pacing in a movie has to be much faster than the deadly slow pacing on the boob tube. That is why, despite endorsements from critics who should know better, The Punch and Judy Man just isn't very funny. Undoubtedly, despite the film's publicity trappings, some of the sequences were not intended to be humorous, but even many of those that are, manage to misfire. They tend to come across as damp squibs, or they are simply too drawn out to become highlights of hilarity. We see far too much of Tony Hancock anyway, but fortunately there are some agreeable contributions by Sylvia Syms, Ronald Fraser, Hugh Lloyd and the ever reliable John Le Mesurier (pronounced "Messer-ah").
Review of The Punch and Judy Man
