A seaside Punch and Judy Show operator despises the pompous people who are on the council. His wife is a social climber, however, and arranges for the P&J show to be featured at a civic event, putting him in a difficult situation.
Tony Hancock, riding high on the back of a TV sitcom based on a specific characterisation of him as a sad but pompous loser and featuring classic scripts by Galton and Simpson, moves into feature films with something altogether angrier and more dour, into which he had considerable creative input.
It didn't do well. It didn't help that the undoubtedly highly talented Hancock was descending into alcoholism.
There are a couple of sequences which are driven by sound editing rather than dialogue - breakfast and ice cream parlour - but they leave one a bit puzzled as to what they were intended to achieve. The antagonism between Hancock and the ice cream man, for instance, would be more understandable if they weren't essentially in the same supplicatory position towards the bigwigs.
One can understand why it didn't hit the mark.
Tony Hancock, riding high on the back of a TV sitcom based on a specific characterisation of him as a sad but pompous loser and featuring classic scripts by Galton and Simpson, moves into feature films with something altogether angrier and more dour, into which he had considerable creative input.
It didn't do well. It didn't help that the undoubtedly highly talented Hancock was descending into alcoholism.
There are a couple of sequences which are driven by sound editing rather than dialogue - breakfast and ice cream parlour - but they leave one a bit puzzled as to what they were intended to achieve. The antagonism between Hancock and the ice cream man, for instance, would be more understandable if they weren't essentially in the same supplicatory position towards the bigwigs.
One can understand why it didn't hit the mark.