Wonderful Life

Wonderful Life is a 1964 musical film.

Cast[]

Cliff Richards - Johnnie
Walter Slezak - Lloyd Davis
Susan Hampshire - Jenny Taylor
Melvyn Hayes - Jerry
Richard O'Sullivan - Edward
Una Stubbs - Barbara Tate

Plot[]

Cliff Richard stars as Johnnie, who works as a waiter on a traveling ferry with his bandmates (The Shadows) and his fellow waiter friends. Through a pyrotechnics accident, the power cuts on the ferry and the group are fired on the spot, stranded on a tiny boat with nothing but their instruments. They float around in the Mediterranean until they reach the Canary Islands, where they spot a young woman wearing tartan clothing, and they try to follow her, accidentally confusing her with a Scottish man wearing a kilt.

The group ends up in a sand dune, miserable and confused, wondering what to do next. They are briefly confused by a mirage of a ferry but then decide to set off again in the direction they were originally heading. Johnnie spots a figure on an out-of-control camel and rushes to save her, but discovers that he had accidentally ruined a scene being filmed for a movie. Despite the disruption, Lloyd Davis the director offers him a job as a stunt double and gives the rest of Johnnie's group jobs as runners.

Later that evening, Johnnie spots a blonde woman sitting at his opposite table reading from a script. Her name is Jenny and she explains that she was the woman in tartan that he and his group had met earlier, as well as the woman that he tried to "save" on the camel, wearing a dark wig to portray the daughter of a sultan. She is very nervous because she doesn't believe that she is a good enough actress to be the leading lady but Johnnie tells her to ignore the cameras and the crew watching her, and imagine that she isn't acting, as if she really was a princess. However, the advice does not help her and she continues to irritate Lloyd, who rants behind the scenes to the leading man about his regret of hiring her.

Between filming scenes, Johnnie's band perform for the bored cast, realising that they could cheer everyone up by making the movie a musical, disguising their spare camera behind various objects, such as a crate of tea, a touring cart, and a wooden box buried in the ground, inspired by the Trojan horse. They decide not to tell Jenny, fearing it will pressurize her, filming much of their scenes when the official cameras are rolling, or when the original crew had finished for the day, but Johnnie's uptight friend Edward scalds them for their ignorance of film-making and their beliefs that it is easy to make one that would be successful. A montage is shown of the characters impersonating movie actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood from their most iconic films, such as Al Jolson's famous blackface scene in The Jazz Singer, Charlie Chaplin outwitting a group of policemen, a scene from West Side Story, the Ursula Andress bikini scene from Dr. No, and a running gag with Greta Garbo, Harpo and Groucho Marx gate crashing a scene, as Edward talks about the significance of these moments in film history.

The group successfully race through the filming under Lloyd and Jenny's noses, filming a musical number by telling Jenny to sing her script along with the music secretly played by Johnnie's band hiding behind a wall. They are caught by an eavesdropping Lloyd who threatens to fire them, but Johnnie convinces him not to. Lloyd smugly tells him that he will allow them to continue but not with any of his equipment. Johnnie and his friends decide to film when the actual team is not around to witness, and borrow a camera from Miguel, a Spanish photographer that they met in a restaurant when they first arrived on the Islands, but worry about filming the finale without Jenny's knowledge. They discuss a plan in a restaurant about secretly filming before Lloyd, who is frequently late, arrives on the set, and Johnnie's friends joke about how deceiving he is, unaware that Lloyd and Jenny are on an adjacent table. It is then revealed that Lloyd is Jenny's father and he hired her through nepotism, and vows to hinder their work as he comforts her, ordering her not to go to the set on the day.

The next day, Johnnie finds Jenny at the nearest swimming pool and begs her to help them, and she agrees, snapping that she never wants to see him again. When filming is over, the mood is melancholy, surprisingly in both camps; Lloyd is disappointed that his final cut for the film isn't up to his standard and Johnnie isn't happy about the musical adaptation either. They decide to join forces and combine their movies, rewriting the tale as a story about two brothers and a princess. It is shown at the movie premiere and the audience's reception is positive. Lloyd expresses his gratitude to Johnnie during the applause and tells him that Jenny wants to marry him. Johnnie is confused, but then remembers that he and Jenny agreed to marry after filming during one of their rehearsal breaks.

Musical numbers[]

"Wonderful Life" - Johnnie
"A Girl in Every Port" - Johnnie, Jerry and Edward
"Home" - Johnnie, Jerry and Edward
"A Little Imagination" - Johnnie
"On The Beach" - Johnnie
"In The Stars" - Johnnie and Jenny
"We Love a Movie" - Johnnie, Jenny, Una Stubbs, Jerry and Edward
"What've I Gotta Do" - Johnie
"Do You Remember" - Johnnie and Jenny
"All Kinds of People" - Johnnie, Una Stubbs, Jerry, and Edward
"A Matter of Moments" - Johnnie, Una Stubbs, Jerry, and Edward
"Youth and Experience" - Johnnie, Lloyd and Cast