A very curious beast, this. It contains many of the trademarks of other Ealing comedies - the little people facing oppressive civil servant types and capitalism, lightly fantastical moments, a sense of community spirit etc. - yet these elements fail to gel this time round. In fact it's probably the only Ealing comedy to really fall flat on its face.
The plot concerns a small, out-of-date railway that is due to be closed down and the local community's attempts to keep it running in the face of monumental adversity. Part of the problem lies in the fact that it's difficult to empathise with the characters' plight; I'd imagine that whereas most people would like to get rich quick (The Lavender Hill Mob, for example), few have dreams of running their own railway. Also, the main characters want to keep the railway going purely out of a desire to uphold tradition, when alternative forms of transportation are far more efficient and a Hell of a lot safer. We're meant to be on the side of the vicar and his chums trying to run a railway on their own but one can't help but think that the bureaucracy are right on this occasion and that the heroes just aren't capable of carrying out this great task. Whilst the problems that beset them are admittedly the fault of an exterior menace - mainly a couple of lads who run a bus route (ooo, scary) - the "goodies" thwart their foes at every turn by... erm... ramming them off the track (nice), or tying the train to the engine by rope (thereby posing a massive safety risk to all the passengers).
Then there's the bit where Sid James shoots holes in the water refill tank and they need to find a new source of water - the river holds the apparent solution, so the drivers bang on the windows of the train and order all the passengers out so that they can help them (!) by raiding the local farm (!!) for containers to carry water back and forth until the engine's filled. Though it says a lot about the community spirit, it's a bit unlikely that the passengers would be willing to expend physical labour on what was supposed to be a quiet journey that they themselves have paid money for (the one man who refuses to do it - saying quite rightly that he shouldn't have to - is painted as the black sheep!). It makes it difficult to believe that everybody should be so keen for the railway to continue when every journey they go on is fraught with safety hazards and delays; most people would sod it for a game of soldiers and get the bus instead. And by the time people are flocking to help push the train along the tracks (a replacement engine from the local museum, note, and therefore even deadlier than the one before) to get it past its government inspection you wonder whether these people should have something better to do with their lives than fret about maintaining what seems to be the most inefficient and dangerous train service that ever existed. In fact the one argument in their favour - that replacing the one train with loads of bus routes and motorways would have huge environmental concerns and destroy the countryside - is mentioned once and then forgotten about; it seems that we're supposed to support them simply because, well, they want to run a railway and it's quite a nice hobby. I know it's supposed to be whimsical and all that but I just couldn't help but think that these characters - with their hearts in the right places - were an utter menace.
Of the cast only Stanley Holloway shines as a wonderfully eccentric chap mad enough to finance the affair so long as the train has a 24 hour bar inside, and there is a wonderful sequence with a train driving down the roads of a local town (one of those magical moments Ealing did so well), but the story doesn't have strong enough foundations and the pace drags awfully (its slim 80 minutes seem to last forever). Not even the old English charm can save it. Probably worth a single viewing but you probably won't go back to it in a hurry.
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