Sometimes comedians can make one film too many.A prime example is Laurel & Hardy.This is the last film of The Crazy Gang.Unfortunately by the time this was made many of the gang were in or approaching their 70s and i am afraid it shows.This is essentially a remake of their 30s film "Alfs Button Afloat".The only change is that Ches Allen has retired and is replaced by the Monsewer Eddie Gray.The Monsewer was always a bit of an outsider,rather added on to make up numbers.To be honest all he could ever do is to add his routines but was never fully integrated.This was a source of some antagonism at the time.On the one hand one can say,why did they do it.On the other it is a last look at a comic institution which would come to an end in 1962.On stage The Gang could be a riot.Unfortunately in this film they are a shadow of their selves.Even Bud Flanagan is struggling with his material.
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malcolmgsw19 December 2004
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James_Byrne26 August 2005LIFE IS A CIRCUS is a sorry cinematic epitaph for the once great British comedians The Crazy Gang. Live on stage they were spontaneous, ludicrous and often hilarious - the forerunners of The Goons and Monty Python: but in this tedious fiasco they sadly look well past their sell-by date. However, as terrible as the movie is, it's still a valuable curio, only the Gang's fifth in 20 years. The minuscule storyline, slipshod direction and geriatric leading performers make this a woeful experience, even in 1958 it looked dated. I had a similar feeling in 1962 when Bing and Bob went on THE ROAD TO HONG KONG. The wafer thin plot centres on The Crazy Gang's attempts to save Joe Winters Monster Circus from closing down, it is in such a sorry financial state that the boss cannot pay the circus hands, so they all quit , except the cleaners (The Crazy Gang). These unlikely performers do their best to put on a show, but fail miserably and the circus looks doomed. Bud Flanagan meets his old pal Chesney Allen "Underneath the Arches" as he's sheltering from the rain and buys a cart load of junk off him for a pound. When Bud cleans a lamp from the cart, a genie appears and grants Bud any wish he desires, but the incompetent genie messes up every wish. This quickly becomes tiresome, especially when the genie produces chandeliers 'borrowed' from Windsor Castle, when Bud had only wished for lights for the circus. Side splitting stuff! There are many things wrong with this movie, the most obvious being it's not in the slightest bit amusing. I guarantee you won't laugh once during the whole sorry 90 minutes.Val Guest wrote the screenplay and also directed the whole mess, so I guess it's all his fault: you would think he couldn't stoop any lower than this, but 15 years later he scripted CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER. Michael Holliday, a popular crooner of the day, sings a few Crosby-like melodies and romances the gorgeous Shirley Eaton, who is completely wasted in this 'comedy'. Joseph Tomelty, as the circus boss, is grating as he constantly moans lines like "For the love of Pete - what's going on here?". Be warned, the 'n' word is used for supposedly comic effect. The only reason I gave this ridiculous rubbish one star was because of the antics of a young Oliver Reed. Look out for him as an extra as a side show spectator. He camps it up wonderfully as Holliday croons the title song. Bud Flanagan recorded the theme tune to DAD'S ARMY just before his death in 1968.
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richardchatten2 April 2024'Life is a Circus' provides further evidence that despite Val Guest serving his apprenticeship as a writer for Will Hay his thrillers were usually far superior to his comedies.
Although effectively a remake of the Crazy Gang's earlier 'Alf's Button Afloat', it more resembles 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', with Shirley Eaton as a country lass in sweater & jeans - who claims that her friends rather improbably call her 'Butch' - as their Snow White.
As the genie Lionel Jeffries provides a satisfactory substitute to Alistair Sim in the earlier film; while the most cherishable moment comes when Flanagan & Allen briefly re team to perform 'Underneath the Arches'. -
ianlouisiana3 September 2006The Crazy Gang were a British Institution,but then again so was hanging and the cat o' nine tails at about the same time,and quite frankly they'll none of them be missed as those other British Institutions Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan once said. Between the wars in a long - lost London of thick fogs,trams and coaster - mongers,The Crazy Gang ,by dint of assiduous forelock tugging, became favourites of the Royal Family,a crazy gang in their own right, and - by extension extremely popular with chirpy cockneys who flocked to see their shows often conveniently based in Victoria - handy for a pint of Watneys with George and Liz back at Buck House no doubt. Flanagan and Allen,Naughton and Gold (immortalised at least in rhyming slang),Nervo and Knox,later the supremely unfunny Monsewer Eddie Gray, were very much sacred cows - based as much as anything on their perceived status as Court Clowns - right up until the end of their lives. Watching and listening to recordings of their act is a desperate business.Humour based on ethnicity,pathetic attempts at American style cross - talk,mindless shouting of "oy!",sniggering references to sex that make Max Miller seem wholesome,all this might have worked had it been funny,but it wasn't. Thus I didn't expect much even in 1959 from "Life's a Circus",and I wasn't disappointed.Even by The Gang's abysmal standards it is terrible. A nudging reference to Royalty here,a dirty old man's leer there,some clumsy clowning,surely they can't have needed the money that badly,didn't Bud Flanagan own some Betting shops? When people talk about the Golden Age of British Television I reckon I must have blinked and missed it.In much the same way much is made of the Golden Age of British Comedy,where the names of the Crazy Gang are writ large.Well,I'm here to tell you it just ain't so.