The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) :
Brief Review -
A school-based chaos that teaches you how a smart comedy of colliding situations can be written for ages to study. Frank Launder has made a film based on a play of the same name by John Dighton to show us how a smart comedy can be choreographed with genuine conflicts. Two people's acts collide with each other, but as they say, "opposite attracts," they two find a solution to solve their problems through these collisions. St. Swithin's Girls' School is accidentally billeted at Nutbourne College, a boys' school in Hampshire. The heads of both schools try to keep a balance and carry on for a week against all odds (funny odds, I must add here). One day, the lady head has some parents visiting the school, for which the boys need to disappear. They have it all planned to help each other-a sort of blackmail-but then the boys school's head also has some important visitors on the same day. Afraid of getting exposed and losing everything they have, the two join forces and stage a schedule that has to run exactly according to the clock so that they both can manage their visitors. But is it that simple when you have 117 boys, 100 girls, and almost 20-25 staff members on the same premises? It sounds impossible, even when you read it here. Then just imagine how they must have written it and brought it to the screen. Usually, we hate chaos, but some comedies have made us love it, and The Happiest Days of Your Life is one of them. It surely gives us some of the happiest moments of a school-based comedy. Alastair Sim is flawless yet again, and supporting him, Margaret Rutherford, is equally great. There is a big bunch of supporting cast along with more than a hundred child artists who have seemed to fit the role despite blink-and-miss shots in this heavy rush school ride. The laughs aren't hysterical, but they are genuinely funny and very cleverly written. Frank Launder has made things so easy when you know it was a difficult job to handle this script with so many artists on the field.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.
A school-based chaos that teaches you how a smart comedy of colliding situations can be written for ages to study. Frank Launder has made a film based on a play of the same name by John Dighton to show us how a smart comedy can be choreographed with genuine conflicts. Two people's acts collide with each other, but as they say, "opposite attracts," they two find a solution to solve their problems through these collisions. St. Swithin's Girls' School is accidentally billeted at Nutbourne College, a boys' school in Hampshire. The heads of both schools try to keep a balance and carry on for a week against all odds (funny odds, I must add here). One day, the lady head has some parents visiting the school, for which the boys need to disappear. They have it all planned to help each other-a sort of blackmail-but then the boys school's head also has some important visitors on the same day. Afraid of getting exposed and losing everything they have, the two join forces and stage a schedule that has to run exactly according to the clock so that they both can manage their visitors. But is it that simple when you have 117 boys, 100 girls, and almost 20-25 staff members on the same premises? It sounds impossible, even when you read it here. Then just imagine how they must have written it and brought it to the screen. Usually, we hate chaos, but some comedies have made us love it, and The Happiest Days of Your Life is one of them. It surely gives us some of the happiest moments of a school-based comedy. Alastair Sim is flawless yet again, and supporting him, Margaret Rutherford, is equally great. There is a big bunch of supporting cast along with more than a hundred child artists who have seemed to fit the role despite blink-and-miss shots in this heavy rush school ride. The laughs aren't hysterical, but they are genuinely funny and very cleverly written. Frank Launder has made things so easy when you know it was a difficult job to handle this script with so many artists on the field.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.