Adventures in Going to London
Dai (Donald Houston - Where Eagles Dare) and Twm (Meredith Edwards - Girdle of Gold), two coal mining brothers, find themselves heading to London as not only have they won a competition and need to collect the prize money but they also get to go to Twickenham to watch a game of Rugby. Whimple (Alec Guinness - Kind Hearts and Coronets), a gardening columnist for the newspaper which ran the competition, finds himself having to cover the story and take the brothers to the game. Unfortunately for Whimple he didn't plan on the train being full of welsh men descending on the capital for the rugby. To make matters worse the brothers end up getting separated when they reach the city, meeting a variety of people on their travels including a con artist woman and also an old friend from the mines who is now singing on street corners.
Welcome to "A Run for Your Money" where the humour is all about national stereotypes and in particular Welsh stereotypes. We have two proud Welsh brothers who of course are miners who come from a town with an unpronounceable long name. And being proud Welsh men they like to sing and have the gift of the gab with a certain lyrical nature to the way they talk. But wait there is more as one of the brother's is a bit wet behind the ears and naive when it comes to the innocence of a con artist woman. It isn't just the Welsh where the comedy comes from in "A Run for Your Money" as we have the con artist London woman whilst Whimple is the snootish gardening correspondent, another stereotype.
The thing is that whilst "A Run for Your Money" has a good cast the majority of the humour surrounds the stereotypes which may have been funny once but isn't so now. It is why it is hardly a surprise that on its release this wasn't a hit with Welsh audiences but went down better with English audiences.
What this all boils down to is that whilst "A Run for Your Money" might have entertained some it iss now not as funny with the humour seeming to be over reliant on stereotypes.
