Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

SA I liked Peter Sellers in his well-known films and I started to watch the harder-to-find movies in his repertoire. I am starting to hate every movie he was in. His satire falls flat throughout his movies and he makes irrelevant points about society. Many people blame the script but he chose to do the movie with this inept script. Humor is lacking throughout this movie and his many other films.First of all, the "satire" in this movie is directed at the stereotypical stuffed-shirts but this movie then builds up the stereotypical low-lifes as heroes. It is a cliché through and through and it is poorly done. The movie was plodding along and bored me to no end.I don't understand why so many people think that any satire of Peter Sellers is funny. There is nothing interesting in this movie and every joke falls flat because of bad timing, bad acting or whatever reason.For example, a man, who is on the dole and refuses to work, loses his home but the vicar allows them to live in the vicarage, where his large family spreads junk around it and continues to steal and cause trouble just like before they lost their other home. This family doesn't need to learn anything but the stuffed-shirts can't do anything right. This type of humor is one-sided at its best and superficial at its worst.

ella-48 I shan't go on at any length, as others have already done the job for me. Instead I'll just drop in a couple of interesting factoids about this film.1) "Heavens Above!" was the third in a trio (a triptych??) of films satirising great pillars of the British establishment:The military;Industry/the trade unions;The church.The previous two in the series were "Private's Progress" (Ian Carmichael as Stanley Windrush - a fraightfully posh chinless wonder, drafted into the army for WWII and finding himself embroiled unwittingly in a grand scheme to steal great works of art) and "I'm Alright, Jack" (Carmichael as the same Stanley Windrush, now de-mobbed and dumped by his despairing family into the shop floor workforce at one of their factories, in the hope that he might learn the business). The Windrush family characters were dropped for Heavens Above, although Carmichael makes a small appearance as "the other Vicar called Smallwood".2) Fans of the Small Faces should keep their eyes peeled for 'Jack' - eldest son of the huge family of itinerant scroungers who take up residence in the vicarage. It's none other than cheeky cockney mudlark STEVE MARRIOTT, fresh from his West End stint as The Artful Dodger in Oliver !

veemoffa While Peter Sellers does a good job with his role as a naive minister -- and most of the supporting roles are also well-played -- the film as a whole is not especially interesting. It has a few funny moments, but is mostly yawn-inducing. Most of the characters, from low-life rogues to the stuffy gentry, are cliches that I've seen a dozen times before. What saves this film from being a total failure is a talented cast -- too bad they didn't have a better script to work with.

Adrian Bailey Peter Sellers is great as the Brummie vicar whose gaucheness brings a small country town to its knees in this famous 60s satire. It's difficult to pin down the film's target; perhaps the film's so likeable because it seems to get a dig in at everybody at the same time. Among the targets are: religion, capitalism, communism, and British society and mores. The moral of the tale seems to be that no matter your efforts or intentions, you're unlikely to improve on the status quo (and could make things a lot worse). So in the last analysis maybe it's Conservative propaganda.The film stomps merrily through all the issues with fun effect and should've quit when it was ahead. The final segment is crass and takes off some of the shine.