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Take Me High
Tim (Cliff Richard) is a successful ambitious young financier working for a London Merchant bank, but even his happy-go-lucky attitude is severely jolted when he is sent to Birmingham instead of his promised New York for his posting! But comedy reigns when the enterprising bank manager helps an unsuccessful Birmingham restaurant compete with its rivals by introducing a new fast food - the Brumburger!
Release : | 1973 |
Rating : | 4.7 |
Studio : | |
Crew : | Director, |
Cast : | Cliff Richard Deborah Watling Hugh Griffith George Cole Anthony Andrews |
Genre : | Comedy Romance |
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Reviews
Nice effects though.
Memorable, crazy movie
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Essentially an extended music video clip for Cliff Richards. Richards is a merchant banker who is moved to Birmingham and what follows is a montage of the brutalist concrete architecture that made Birmingham worse, and shots of flyovers before they were covered in tags and vomit.George Cole is there and there's a famous scene of shooting the television set. Later there is a 1980s direct-to-video film style plot line where Richards and his girlfriend plan to open a burger bar selling "Brumburgers". There's quite a lot of embarrassed people in the street scene, as if having to live in Birmingham wasn't punishment enough ! Product placement - BOAC airlines.
By any measure this is a very cheesy film, but it's so harmless and wholesome you can't really take umbrage with it. Based around the jewel of the British Waterways, the Gas Street basin it offers a fascinating historical insight into this very special area of Birmingham. Sort of film you can enjoy as long as you restrict watching it to, say, every ten years or so.It's a pity that it has yet to be released on a modern format as I know many Brummies would enjoy just watching the film for the shots around the City. A City which has changed much, Take me High provides a good visual snap shot of the capitol of the British Midlands just before it's decline as a light industrial engineering world centre.During Cliffs tenure on his canal boat in the Gas Street basin he would have had a neighbour in the fictional Wilf Harvey popular elderly Crossroads character who lived on dry land adjacent to the canals.
Back in the late 1960's, Birmingham's canal network was in sad decline - with more miles of canals than Venice, this undemanding story with tracks sung by Cliff had a reasonable story-line, but the REAL star is the City of Birmingham itself.Since the film was made, the canal network has been given the respect it deserved and is now a working waterway, with new developments at Gas Street Basin (behind the 'Brumburger' shop) a testament to the regeneration. Since the 70's, Birmingham is probably unrecognisable, with many of the modern buildings shown already replaced.The cast worked well, but it was often painful watching the Fox hunting scenes (now a banned activity) and seemingly added only to add some 'english quaintness' for non-native viewers.
OK so it's Cliff in flares in Birmingham but this film has a charm all it's own. The soundtrack is brilliant, these songs are very good and the storyline is refreshing in that it's based in England. Anthony Andrews and Hugh Griffiths are great and Cliff is, well, Cliff!Watch it enough times and you'll soon have your favourite scenes, lines and even songs. The moral is still relevant today - money and the pursuit of real happiness. There are some good actors in this and George Cole is superb as a hardbitten socialist. Cliff has some great outfits in this, truly 100% 1973 gear and it's an interesting snapshot of life in this country all those years ago. I'd like to add that Gas Street IS in the middle of Birmingham - we did the map fold!!!!!