Cheer Boys Cheer

The film Charles Barr saw both as an allegory for Ealing's own history and a remarkable precursor of the later Ealing comedies. Unfortunately, Gwenn's fascist brewer (busily trying to take over his rival) is left disappointingly one-dimensional, and the romantic sub-plot wavers precariously as Pilbeam pulls out all the stops to deal with two horribly miscast suitors. As compensation, though, much of the film takes off into glorious comedy as Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt - surely the most enduring comics of the period - anarchically disrupt each scene they appear in.