Somehow, in a lifetime in which I estimate having seen over 25,000 films (starting about 72 years back), I had totally missed "The Happiest Days of Your Life". I can be counted upon to rave about a film I like, but rarely go off the deep end over such things. Not until now, anyway. If this isn't the absolutely funniest movie I have ever seen in my life, I can't recall what is. Of course, there are different comedy genres, from French Farce to British Droll, from The Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello to "Some Like It Hot" and "Tom Jones", possibly ending up with Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. But of the kind which relies on sparkling, witty, and cutting dialog delivered by masters (especially British masters), this one has no equal. I live alone, and do not laugh out loud all that often when viewing comedy of any kind, but at 3am this morning, my neighbors could probably have heard me a dozen times laughing right through the walls; this film is just that funny. The slapstick elements that commence about three-quarters of the way through are in themselves hilarious, but the first quarter of the film, given over to the male masters of an all-boys school, is like nothing I have ever seen or heard before, and the actors delivering this scintillating portion of the dialog - Alastair Sim, Richard Wattis, Guy Middleon and Edward Rigby, in particular - are irreplaceable in all of their individual splendor of delivery. When Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell and others from the distaff side of the proceedings arrive to place their unwelcome mark on what had been a pretty much all-male environment, the dialog and humor remain impeccably delightful (and British; God almighty, it is all so wonderfully British!), but increasing comedic physicality becomes the order of the day. Indeed, the confrontation scenes between Sim and Rutherford - and there are many, constituting the middle portion of the film - are so powerfully comedic that the lines and rejoinders attain an almost corporeal physicality. I've never seen anything of this type so perfectly done on the screen, and the entire 75 or 80 minutes of verbal and physical mayhem are so overwhelmingly delightful that, as one other commentator remarked, I could easily have done with another half-hour of it incorporated into the glorious whole of the film. Anyway, as far as my memory serves right now, from a dialog and one-liner standpoint, this is surely the funniest movie I can recall having seen. I will watch it again tonight and on many subsequent nights, since I have 68 years of catching up to do
Review of The Happiest Days of Your Life
