Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

chaswe-28402 Humour is funny. Some people laugh loudly at what others don't. This film is paired on a single disc with The Green Man, which for me is the funniest ever produced. Yet SFS sits marginally higher on the IMDb rating list. I don't get it. The substance and script of this offering is insufficient. There's not much of a story and no plot. Ineffective executive loser takes a ridiculous expensive course in how to be overbearing and becomes a winner. Its pace drags.The one-upmanship joke is a one-joke joke. Once you've heard it once or possibly twice, it ceases to be funny, and, in my view, doesn't amuse any more. Here, it goes on and on, interminably. Terry-Thomas is wasted. He can be hilarious, but only in special situations, and relatively small doses. The Hattie Jacques episode is entirely pointless. That tennis match grows frankly tedious, and is suffered twice. A sports scenario, predicated on actual skill, does not exactly lend itself to one-upmanship, which only has purpose in social settings. Ian and Alastair are OK, but in a restricted sort of way. I didn't actually laugh, and really only smiled if I was feeling generous. The Swiftmobile was impressive, but the sales spiel from Dennis and friend, larded with verbosity, went on far too long. Janette was easy on the eye. Insufficient compensation for the general emptiness.

bkoganbing In a sense School For Scoundrels was years ahead of its time because today what Alastair Sim was be doing would be called motivational speaking. I'd hate to think what he could be charging today for his self improvement lectures. Ian Carmichael has some self esteem issues, he just thinks he's a loser in the game of life. Most especially a pretty girl he literally ran into played by Janette Scott is being given a first class rush by that cad Terry-Thomas.I think you can figure what happens after Carmichael takes a few courses at Sim's College of Oneupmanship. Just see the two contrasting tennis games that are played by the rivals.Terry-Thomas with that rakish mustache is so perfect when burlesques Snidely Whiplash like villains on the screen. And Norman Vincent Peale might have approved of Sim's take on the power of positive thinking. Not exactly what Peale had in mind, but much more fun.

JLRMovieReviews Ian Carmichael is always getting the short end of the stick and feeling inferior to people. He finds out about a school that will boost your self-esteem. Enter April, a lovely lady, he initially bumped into and made a somewhat goofy impression. He tries to take her out. But his reservation was all a misunderstanding, and then Terry-Thomas shows up with all his usual charming flair, saying they're his guests but making Ian pay and monopolizing all of April's attention. From then on, Terry considers her his girl. But, when Ian goes to the school, things change. The founder and teacher of the school is Mr. Potter (the name of the author of the books from which this is based), played by Alistair Sim, who gives a very understated performance. By way of manipulative tricks, one can maneuver people and control conversations and situations so that he comes out on top of everyone, in other words as Alastair says,"to be one up on your fellow man. After all, there's you and then there's everyone else." In the beginning, Terry was in control and was beating Ian in a game of tennis and Terry keeps repeating "Hard Cheese" whenever Ian's serve fails to get over the net, meaning of course, oh, bad luck, but its constant use gets on Ian's nerves and I've never seen a more hilarious tennis match in my life, but later on they have another match. This time, Ian makes him wait and in the process gets Terry totally frustrated and discombobulated even before they get there. Then there's Dennis Price who sold him a clunker of a car, but after Ian's class, he's learned a thing or two about dealing with these salesman. But will love win out for Ian and April? Watch and see, and learn. "School for Scoundrels" is 90 minutes and is one of the best comedies I've seen in a long time, one that will leave you feeling good long after and make you keep repeating to yourself, hard cheese, and laughing all day, and with Terry-Thomas in his element and never better, no one loses.

Neil Welch Stephen Potter wrote a series of humorous "self-help" books at around the turn of the 1950s which purported to teach life's losers how to become winners without actually cheating (although manipulating the rules was perfectly permissible).Some years later those books formed the basis of School For Scoundrels, in which the fictitious Yeovil academy (principal S. Potter, played by Alistair Sim) teaches the easily intimidated Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) how to turn the tables on rotter and cad Raymond Delauney (Terry-Thomas) and win back the lovely April Smith (Janette Scott).The script, by Peter Ustinov, turns the spoof techniques of the book into maguffins driving a coherent narrative. The story, and the developments in it, are pleasing and funny, the performances are all excellent and, notwithstanding the fact that the film is clearly rooted in the 1950s, there is a freshness and timelessness about it.And it is fair to say that it is the beneficiary of a beautifully crisp transfer of the monochrome original to DVD.This film is as enjoyable as any of the Ealing comedies.