THE GALLOPING MAJOR is an endearing British comedy set in the world of horse racing and the bookmakers it attracts. I'm no real fan of the subject matter, but this film combines a lively, upbeat script with a cast of familiar British character actors to give it a sheen of quality that makes it impossible to dislike in many respects.

The underrated Basil Radford plays a struggling businessman with a young daughter to care for; she's played by Janette Scott, who would later go on to make films for Hammer and the like as an adult. She was also Thora Hird's daughter. Radford decides to buy a racehorse with the help of an unlikely debt collector, played by the great Hugh Griffith. It doesn't go exactly to plan, and the story goes from here.

THE GALLOPING MAJOR is one of those films where it's very easy to sit back and just enjoy the wealth of talent on the screen. Sid James is here and Charles Hawtrey too, near unrecognisable in a bit part. Joyce Grenfell brings a lot of character even though she only has a few lines, while Kenneth More makes an early appearance as a film director. Jimmy Hanley gets a lot of screen time, Sydney Tafler is a barber, Alfie Bass a newspaper seller, and real-life horse racing commentator Raymond Glendenning plays himself. It's a slight tale overall, but a fun one too.

Basil Radford is a fine judge of horseflesh, but he has no interest in betting. He wants to own a racehorse. He forms a syndicate to do so in his quiet London neighborhood of Lamb's Green, and they buy the wrong horse. Nothing loath, they train it anyway.... for the Grand National.

Henry Cornelius follows up his classic PASSPORT TO PIMLICO with another movie about the peculiar madness of the English. Although it lacks the general insanity of his better known picture, it has the funniest horse race I've ever seen on celluloid. With Jimmy Hanley, Rene Ray, Joyce Grenfell, and A.E. Matthews.

The films directed by Henry Cornelius can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Passport to Pimlico (1948) -- one of Britain's most successful comedies -- The Galloping Major (1951) -- Genevieve (1953) -- possibly Britain's number one combined box office and critical success for the year -- I Am a Camera (1955) -- which failed to fill audiences with enthusiasm but nonetheless provoked the ire of the censor and thus became a top money-maker by default -- and finally Next To No Time (1957) which failed dismally even though it starred Kenneth More and was deliberately kept back from release until More scored a major triumph with A Night To Remember.

So how does The Galloping Major fare in this line-up? Very well, in my opinion. It has a lively script with several very ingenious touches. I love his moral-ground introduction in which A.E. Matthews lays down the law to our hopeful hero, but in the very next scene we discover that his motivation is more than somewhat curdled. The same goes for the introductory and following scenes featuring Hugh Griffith.

All the players bar one are at the top of their form. True, Kenneth More has little to do and doesn't really look the film director type; but the big letdown is Raymond Glendenning who hogs the camera so avidly, it seems like he's never going to let go! For a while there, it seems like Cornelius is going to make a thing of double-decker buses. This doesn't follow through, but happily, transport is certainly one of the main items on his agenda.

In all, despite Gendenning and an adequate but not exactly overly charismatic hero, plus a few slow patches here and there, The Galloping Major is a British character-filled delight.