Kingsley Amis was not an "Angry Young Man",Jim Dixon was no Jimmy Porter full of contempt and loathing. He was,no doubt,and rightly so,contemptuous of his boss Professor Welch but desperate to keep on the right side of him as he struggled to retain a permanent position in Welch's History Dept in a less than inspiring provincial university in the early 1950s. "No other Professor in Great Britain",thought Jim,"set such store by being called Professor". Welch is played in the Grand Manner by Mr H.Griffith whose plummy Welsh tones roll around Common Rooms and Dining Rooms alike. He feeds off the sycophancy of his inferiors - anybody who is not a Professor - and accepts Dixon's unquestioning advocacy as his due. His son Bertrand(Mr T - Thomas;quite brilliant) is an objectionable would - be writer,also assiduous in seeking acolytes and admirers. His girlfriend Christine(Miss S. Acker fitting a fifties stereotype) becomes the object of Dixon's fantasies as he struggles to rescue himself from a somewhat bizarre relationship with a work colleague. Mr I.Carmichael is a slightly more assertive Stanley Windrush - the character he played in other Boulting comedies. The novel relates Dixon's thoughts and no one else's so with the film we are seeing Jim from the outside for the first time and the Boultings actually make a good job of fleshing him out,perhaps making him "nicer" than Amis intended,but giving Mr Carmichael a chance to move away from his nervous city gent,junior - officer persona. James Ellroy said of the filmed adaptation of "L.A.Confidential".. "The book was mine - the movie is theirs". Mr Amis may not have been so pragmatic,but the sentiment remains true. His novel was a bit more subtle,his Dixon perhaps more complex,and there are some jarring differences that will surprise and perhaps offend the more sensitive of the book's admirers,but the fact remains that the film "Lucky Jim" is very funny with some fine British actors at the top of their game and a worthy addition to the Boulting Brothers' oeuvre.

The main ideas of the book are portrayed in the film. However, I think that some relevant aspects of the book were not mentioned. The way that Dixon sees his job, for example. The book shows clearly that he doesn't like teaching and doesn't take his job seriously. The instability of Margaret Peel is another example. In the book, she acts in a more hysterical way. We also noticed that Profesor Welch was not as snobbish and dreamy as in the book. In addition, we think that the movie's humour is far more straightforward and obvious than the one in the book. We can see that in the final scenes, with the silly chase. And why is Bertrand a novelist rather than a painter? Nevertheless, there are some good aspects of the film worth mentioning. The actors were very good. For example, Ian Carmichael, who plays Dixon, and Sharon Acken, who plays Christine, were very successful in their roles. On the whole, despite having some silly, over-the-top moments, it was worth watching.

I don't think this 1950's Boulting Brothers comedy dramatisation of Kingsley Amis's novel has aged well. It purports to mock upper-class academia of the time through the vessel of Ian Carmichael's title character (cue madrigal singers) as he gently rocks up against his so-called superiors and betters and supposedly knocks them down a peg or two with his freshness, unconventionality and honesty. It's funny how in so doing he comes off himself as a rather eccentric upper-class toff, one who you believe could still end up as one of the stuffy establishment figures he's presumably meant to contrast with.

It doesn't help that Carmichael is much too old in the part. The Angry Young Men were starting to make waves in British theatre and cinema at the time but here all we get a mildly querulous, getting-on-somewhat man blundering and blustering from one unlikely situation to another. The three main comedic set-pieces of Jim (cue madrigal singers) playing in an impromptu musical gathering at his college superior's house, disastrously arranging the floral display of the university procession to be attended by the new college chancellor and lastly his drunkenly irreverent speech on the designated theme of "Merrie England" in front of the assembled pupils and masters all fall flat with the only time I was remotely amused being when in his drunken state he predictably finds himself in the bedroom of his torch-carrying old-maid admirer and proceeds to shoot over the proverbial open goal. Somehow, in all this, he still gets the pretty young girl although the fact that his competition is Terry Thomas in an unsympathetically written-part makes that a foregone conclusion almost from their first meeting.

I see that contemporary critics compared Carmichael's performance as Jim (cue madrigal singers) with that of Jerry Lewis which somehow manages to insult them both. No one else in the cast stood out for me either although they were none of them helped by the dull screenplay and stodgy direction. If this is what passed for rebelliousness in late 50's British cinema, I can only say I'm glad that the so-called kitchen sink dramas with genuinely vibrant young talent like Finney, Harvey, Bates and Courteney were just around the corner.

Oh and those madrigal singers will infuriate you with every chorus!