Old Mother Riley at Home

11th in the series starring Arthur Lucan and his missus Kitty McShane. While certainly not the best in the series there are still a reasonable amount of genuine chuckles to be had and the film is very watchable. The version I have is not of the best quality and this always has to be taken into consideration when watching films of this ilk; sometimes they are far better than the actual film quality allows. Here we have Kitty getting sacked because of her mother (again!!) and ending up working at an illegal gambling joint because of her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Bill. Incidentally, the boyfriend is played by Willer Neal who in real life was having affair with Kitty, and was an all round bad egg. The plot is practically non-existent, even for an OMR film and it wouldn't be unfair to say that this is a by-the-numbers Old Mother Riley but Lucan still manages to do his stuff successfully. Could easily do without Kitty's songs though.

Regular readers of my comments know that I take each movie as a special challenge. Some movies are rewarding in themselves, they intrinsically enrich or give value. Most are less than that and require work to make the experience valuable or at least interesting.

Sometimes the challenge is significant. Readers have been sending me movies to test my ability, sort of like audience members throwing chain saws to jugglers. There's a really challenging batch in my pouch right now, some Abbott and Costello nuisances, and ALL of the Mother Riley things.

Of them, this is the most challenging, which is to say that it has nothing in it that by itself is remotely interesting. There's none of the ordinary leverage you can get with bad movies: nothing in the badness is comically bad.

Its quite simply unsuccessful in its two goals.

The setup is Mrs Riley, played by a man and his on screen daughter played by his wife. She's so much younger that early in their careers they were advertised as father and daughter.

She's alarmingly unattractive. Mrs Riley is nauseatingly unfunny. Usually when jokes don't work, it is because there's a certain ticklish spot that some folks have and you just fall out of the demographic. So you can dismiss it as bad humor, but in doing so you acknowledge that it IS humor.

The funny bit with Mrs Riley is rooted in the Bristish class system and a specific niche. This is a lot like Eddie Murphy playing a fat black mama. We all know the type. We all recognize what Murphy is playing with. But in 50 years, that stereotype will be gone, the class structure will have mutated and the riff will be completely incomprehensible because its center will have evaporated.

Well, that's what happened here. The joke about a specific type of old bag may have had resonance in its time and place — it surely did. But now, it is fossilized humor.

The story is unique for the Riley serious, I think. It tries to have the old family lost and regained plot. Well, that I can be sure of is merely incompetent.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

The usual grotesque, studio-bound shenanigans with 'daughter' Kitty McShane (described by her latest admirer as "a nice kid") bringing home her latest portly, middle-aged 'sweetheart' under the beady eye of her garrulous mother; who at one point turns to confide in the audience on a scene featuring Patricia Laffan in an amusing breach of the fourth wall.

Shot during the war but released after it, the only nod towards current events is the chorus girls dressed as land girls when her latest beau serenades her to a ditty entitled 'Let's Pretend We're Sweethearts'. The action then moves to the usual swank mansion (were Wally Patch looks more like a bouncer than a butler) targeted by the usual gang of crooks for a very thirties conclusion.

It is difficult to know what is worse Kittys attempts at singing or watching one of Arthur Lucan's laboured routines. It all adds up to an entertainment free environment. Watching the grass grow is a preferable option.