Lucky Jim

Jim Dixon is a junior lecturer at an unnamed provincial university. Kingsley Amis, who wrote the novel on which this film is based, took his title from a song- "Oh, lucky Jim, How I envy him..." (We hear this song a couple of times during the film). As the story opens, however, Jim does not seem to be particularly lucky or enviable. Indeed, his life can be summed up in the words of the theme-song from "Friends":-

"Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D. O. A."

He hates his job and his boss, Professor Welch. He is perpetually short of cash and forced to live in a seedy lodging-house. His relationship with his possessive, needy girlfriend Margaret appears to be going nowhere and, while he has set his cap at an attractive blonde named Christine, that relationship also appears to be doomed as she is the girlfriend of Welch's novelist son Bertrand.

The novel has long been a favourite of mine, but I have never had the same affection for the film version, largely because the film-makers never manage to find an equivalent for Amis's bitingly satirical authorial voice. Scenes which are brilliantly funny in the book, such as Professor Welch's disastrous musical weekend, in the course of which Jim manages to set fire to his bed, or the one in which Jim delivers a lecture while drunk, never come to life in the same way on the screen. The scriptwriters also include some episodes of slapstick humour not found in the book, such as Jim's attempt to organise the floral decorations at an academic ceremony or the chase scene at the end, but these are no substitute for Amis's savage wit.

Ian Carmichael was later to gain a reputation for playing upper-class characters such as Bertie Wooster or the aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, but in 1957 these productions still lay in the future. Even so he still seems a bit too posh for Jim, who is supposed to be a working-class Northerner, as well as a bit too old at 37. This means that the question of social class, an important theme in the novel, is rather avoided in the film. Contrary to what one reviewer writes, Amis, who in 1954 still considered himself to be on the Left, was not using "Lucky Jim" to satirise well-heeled bourgeois Leftists. (Later, when he had moved sharply to the Right, he was to lay into radical-chic champagne socialists with gusto in novels like "Girl, 20" from 1971). Professor Welch, with his romantic fantasies of some pre-modern pre-industrial "Merrie England", is a nostalgia-obsessed cultural conservative, and Bertrand probably a political one.

The Jim of the novel is in many ways a flawed character. For one who hopes to make a living by teaching history, he displays a surprising lack of enthusiasm for his subject. He drinks too much, often treats Margaret badly and can be rude and tactless. He devotes a lot of energy to pursuing feuds against those who annoy him and can be oddly childish. The character in the film is very much watered down in an attempt to make him more likeable; this attempt succeeds to some extent, but at the cost of also making him less interesting.

Maureen Connell's Margaret is less neurotic, hysterical and manipulative here than she is in the book, and as a result becomes completely forgettable. Sharon Acker's Christine is almost equally so. (Christine was English in the book but here becomes Canadian, possibly in order to make the film more marketable in North America). Those characters in the film who do stand out tend to be those who are played in the same way as they are in the novel, notably Hugh Griffith's absent-minded, evasive, pedantic and pretentious Professor Welch and Terry-Thomas's pompous, self-important, snobbish and bullying Bertrand. (Like Carmichael, however, Terry-Thomas at 46 was really too old. He was actually a year older than Griffith who plays his father).

The film is not altogether a bad one and can provide a few amusing moments. When one considers how good its source novel is, however, it really should have been a lot better. 6/10.

This is an outstanding movie whose meticulously-crafted set pieces frequently had me in stitches. Superbly cast, Ian Carmichael, Hugh Griffiths and Terry-Thomas were in exceptional form, and the luminous beauty of Sharon Acker lights up the film. If you don't find this funny, charming and uplifting, all I can say is that I feel sorry for you!

The pompous, stiff and class-deferential era of the 1950s is marvellously evoked in this movie. Always the sign of a classic, even the minor characters - Mrs Welch, the taxi driver, the waiter and the university porter, for instance - all hold their own and come across as real people. The appalling persona of Bertrand Welch (Terry-Thomas) with his self-obsessed sense of his own importance is excellently drawn. One to see and quite possibly one to keep.

Lucky Jim is directed by John Boulting and adapted from the Kingsley Amis novel of the same name. It stars Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Hugh Griffith, Sharon Acker and Jean Anderson.

A Redbrick university In Britain's New Elizabethan Age: Here Are Moulded The Intellectual Drakes And Raleighs Of Tomorrow-Fearless, Independent- -

And State Supported!

Enter Carmichael's accident prone Jim Dixon, who in order to keep his job at the University has to do the bidding for Griffith's dull Professor Welch. Worse still, maybe, is having to spend time with his boorish family, especially the Son, pompous show off Bertrand (Thomas). Salvation may come in the form of Bertrand's companion, though, Christine Callaghan (Acker)?

I haven't read the Amis novel this is based on, so can't have frame of reference there. By all accounts it's very different, and staunch Amis supporters are very dismissive of the Boulting movie. The film itself is hardly prime Boullting Brothers, who would produce British classics such as Brighton Rock and I'm All Right Jack, but it has a number of funny scenes whilst also being nicely flecked with satirical flavouring. Carmichael attacks the lead role with gusto and comic affability, while "scary eyebrows" Griffith and Terry-Thomas provide good comedy footings for Carmichael to work from. The ladies are pretty and effective enough, without really doing anything any other British actress of the time couldn't have done, but all told it's a well acted and genial time filler for the undemanding. 6.5/10

Fans of Kingsley Amis's brilliant novel might with justification hate this adaptation, but taken on its own terms, it is an enjoyable slice of 'fifties British comedy. While the novel's bite may have been lost, the movie's troubled production history (a few weeks into the filming, the original director, Ealing's Charles Crichton, was replaced) fails to show on the finished film.

Ian Charmichael is at his best in this movie. The combination of a (realistic) Northern accent, plus a slightly harder edged characterisation, helps distance him from his usual 'silly ass' image. Perhaps he isn't the Dixon of the book, but it is a fair attempt. A first rate cast adds to the fun, in particular a small but perfectly formed cameo by Terry-Thomas steals the movie.

The final chase is, as been noted, the movie's weakest link (it seems to come out of nowhere and does not fit in with the rest of the film) and is it fair from being the best Amiss adaptation (that honour belongs to the wonderful 'Only Two Can Play'). But despite these flaws, it remains a watch able enough movie.

It's hard for me to be objective about this film, as it is adapted from my favorite novel--which I've read eight or nine times. Also, I waited so long to see it that it may have been inevitable that I would ultimately be disappointed. Ironically, I first heard about the film some years before I read the book, and it was only after I read the book that I made the connection between it and the description my brother had once given me. It would be about 20 years (no kidding!) before I finally saw the film myself. I've now seen it twice and mostly hated it both times.

Kingsley Amis's LUCKY JIM was obligatory reading among history students when I was in grad school 30 years ago. The story about an unhappy history instructor in a crummy British provincial university expressed a lot of the angst that we felt as grad students, and it was funnier than heck as well. I loved the book then, and still love all these years later. Why, then, was the film such a disappointment? Mainly because the script muted much of the savageness of Amis's humor, and because it tacked on an idiotic chase scene at the end that has nothing whatever to do with the original story--or even with what goes before it in the film. (Even Ian Carmichael--who played Jim--hated that ending. He told me that the people making the film didn't seem to have any idea of what they were doing--and it shows.)

The producers also added a very unsatisfactory and irrelevant academic procession in them middle of the film--evidently for the sole purpose of making Carmichael look like a klutz by having him tripping over flowerpots and dropping things in the middle of the solemn affair.

Nevertheless, the film does have its virtues, chief among them is excellent casting. Ian Carmichael was born to play Jim. Terry-Thomas was properly unctuous as Bertrand; Hugh Griffith certainly looked the part as Professor Neddy; Maureen Connell looked like I imagined the neurotic Margaret Peel; and Sharon Acker made a fine-looking Christine Callaghan.