Jules Verne's Rocket To The Moon. (U.)
Directed by Don Sharp. 1967.
Starring Burl Ives, Troy Donahue, Terry-Thomas, Daliah Lavi, Gert Frobe, Jimmy Clitheroe, Lionel Jeffries, Dennis Price and Graham Stark. Available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital from Studiocanal Vintage Classics from April 12th. 119 mins.
Except it isn't. Jules Verne's that is. Haven't read it – young boys with a sci-fi leaning soon learn that Verne's 19th-century prose stylings make for turgid adventures – but I'm guessing that his book doesn't have P.T. Barnum (Ives) and Colonel Tom Thumb (Clitheroe) joining up with various members of the Victorian aristocracy to engage in a selection of comic shenanigans while attempting to build a giant cannon in a Welsh mountain to fire a manned projectile to the Moon. I'm also pretty sure it included a rocket that went to the Moon.
Normally I wouldn't be spoiling the ending of the film, even one over half a century old, but it seems justified in this case: this rocket doesn't go to the moon. The entire film is about the preparation for it. And though I'm pretty sure I half knew this going in, and was certain of it by the halfway point, it still hurts. You can tell yourself you haven't been scammed if you know what the scam is beforehand, but deep down you know you've been taken. You can never fully rationalise away hope.
What you get instead is the kind of sprawling light-hearted period romp with an international cast that was very popular in the sixties: busy things like Monte Carlo Or Bust and Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines. These were movies where the machinery and gadgets were so impressive and the people involved so prestigious that it scarcely mattered that not much of it was actually funny or exciting; the process was the entertainment. Rocket To The Moon is a slightly cheaper version of those, but lavish enough in its own way.
Its cast isn't quite starstudded, but it has admirable variety. Burl Ives' Barnum is a rather unshowy Great Showman. Dennis Price's upper-class dabbler in engineering and inventing is a bit of a silly ass, all a bit too amiable to fully utilise Price's suave malevolence. Luckily Terry-Thomas is cast absolutely to type as a bounder and a cad, so you have him to rely on and Lionel Jeffries gives good bluster as his reluctant sidekick. Goldfinger Frobe is there as a mad German professor obsessed with explosives though it often seems like he is involved in some separate project. Even when he shares the screen with the other stars, he's not quite connected to them. To provide the hero, the man bold enough to attempt to fly to the moon the film has employed the services of a Troy, as was the tradition at that time, to play a character called Gaylord; a suitable name for a man engaged in reckless adventuring.
There are some very funny moments in it but a lot of it feels like slightly too much effort put in for slightly too little effect. For example, there's a lengthy sequence where Ives' Barnum goes to visit Frobe while he's experimenting with a cannon on a beach and it ends up with everybody buried in the sand after an explosion, and ultimately, you wonder why he had to be brought in for such a basic bit of slapstick.
Extras
Interviews with Matthew Sweet and Kim Newman, both as entertaining and informative as ever, and both concentrating on the figure of writer/ producer Harry Alan Towers, a colourful charlatan figure. He was a man whose own story was invariably more interesting than the one he was putting on screen.
Directed by Don Sharp. 1967.
Starring Burl Ives, Troy Donahue, Terry-Thomas, Daliah Lavi, Gert Frobe, Jimmy Clitheroe, Lionel Jeffries, Dennis Price and Graham Stark. Available on Blu-ray, DVD and digital from Studiocanal Vintage Classics from April 12th. 119 mins.
Except it isn't. Jules Verne's that is. Haven't read it – young boys with a sci-fi leaning soon learn that Verne's 19th-century prose stylings make for turgid adventures – but I'm guessing that his book doesn't have P.T. Barnum (Ives) and Colonel Tom Thumb (Clitheroe) joining up with various members of the Victorian aristocracy to engage in a selection of comic shenanigans while attempting to build a giant cannon in a Welsh mountain to fire a manned projectile to the Moon. I'm also pretty sure it included a rocket that went to the Moon.
Normally I wouldn't be spoiling the ending of the film, even one over half a century old, but it seems justified in this case: this rocket doesn't go to the moon. The entire film is about the preparation for it. And though I'm pretty sure I half knew this going in, and was certain of it by the halfway point, it still hurts. You can tell yourself you haven't been scammed if you know what the scam is beforehand, but deep down you know you've been taken. You can never fully rationalise away hope.
What you get instead is the kind of sprawling light-hearted period romp with an international cast that was very popular in the sixties: busy things like Monte Carlo Or Bust and Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines. These were movies where the machinery and gadgets were so impressive and the people involved so prestigious that it scarcely mattered that not much of it was actually funny or exciting; the process was the entertainment. Rocket To The Moon is a slightly cheaper version of those, but lavish enough in its own way.
Its cast isn't quite starstudded, but it has admirable variety. Burl Ives' Barnum is a rather unshowy Great Showman. Dennis Price's upper-class dabbler in engineering and inventing is a bit of a silly ass, all a bit too amiable to fully utilise Price's suave malevolence. Luckily Terry-Thomas is cast absolutely to type as a bounder and a cad, so you have him to rely on and Lionel Jeffries gives good bluster as his reluctant sidekick. Goldfinger Frobe is there as a mad German professor obsessed with explosives though it often seems like he is involved in some separate project. Even when he shares the screen with the other stars, he's not quite connected to them. To provide the hero, the man bold enough to attempt to fly to the moon the film has employed the services of a Troy, as was the tradition at that time, to play a character called Gaylord; a suitable name for a man engaged in reckless adventuring.
There are some very funny moments in it but a lot of it feels like slightly too much effort put in for slightly too little effect. For example, there's a lengthy sequence where Ives' Barnum goes to visit Frobe while he's experimenting with a cannon on a beach and it ends up with everybody buried in the sand after an explosion, and ultimately, you wonder why he had to be brought in for such a basic bit of slapstick.
Extras
Interviews with Matthew Sweet and Kim Newman, both as entertaining and informative as ever, and both concentrating on the figure of writer/ producer Harry Alan Towers, a colourful charlatan figure. He was a man whose own story was invariably more interesting than the one he was putting on screen.
