Crooning, Composing & Comedy
Ray (Terence Morgan - Piccadilly Third Stop) and Ken (George Cole - Where There's a Will) are a pair of struggling composers who find themselves befriending Georgie (Mylène Demongeot - Doctor in Distress), a French singer who has arrived in London from Paris to hopefully make it as a singer. Having heard one of Ray and Ken's songs she uses it as an audition piece for bandleader Ted Heath which sees her hired as the band's singer. But whilst this is happening Ken discovers that his record player has started to play songs in reverse and he comes across the idea of transcribing this music and with Ray's help pushing it as a new avante garde sound. And it works until Georgie discovers the scam that Ray and Ken are trying to get away with.
"It's a Wonderful World" is one of those British recipe movies where they have thrown some familiar elements together. That starts with a couple of best mates in Ray and Ken who are struggling to make a go of things as composers who not only share their limited clothes but try to sound sophisticated when they try to chat up Georgie. That leads me to the attractive love interest in Georgie who is played with lots of bubbly enthusiasm by Mylène Demongeot but at times the character is little more than a sexy pin-up figure. And on top of that we have Ted Heath plus a few entertaining musical numbers thrown in to the mix. It means that whilst "It's a Wonderful World" is fun it is also forgettable due to its generic, manufactured nature.
But what "It's a Wonderful World" has is the combination of Terence Morgan and George Cole with Morgan turning on the charm whilst Cole delivers that gift of gab, wheeler dealer which he made look effortless. The scenes where these two are together work so well because of the banter flies back and forth freely. But truth be told there is little which is different to this than you will find in many a movie and at times the musical scenes, such as a dream sequence, feel like it is heavily drawing on the Hollywood musicals of the 30s and 40s but done on a much smaller budget, with lots of stage smoke used to try and cover up those budget shortcomings.
What this all boils down to is that "It's a Wonderful World" is a movie built with many a familiar ingredient from the humour to the banter and as such it is entertaining but at the same time pretty forgettable. Although for those who enjoy old music might get a kick out of seeing Ted Head and his band on the screen.
