Norman Wisdom reprises his best-loved character, the comically inept Pitkin, in 1965's The Early Bird, ably supported once again by Edward Chapman in his final appearance as Mr Grimsdale. This time around Wisdom is the only milkman working for Grimsdale's Dairy, a small business threatened by a menacing large corporation in the shape of Consolidated Dairies and their electric milk floats. Grimsdale and Pitkin must evoke the Dunkirk spirit to save their family firm from the grasp of the faceless giant. Of course, the wafer-thin plot is the merest excuse for a series... of calamitous set pieces in which Wisdom wreaks havoc in his trademark bumbling manner. The best bits involve a disastrous game of golf, the usual shenanigans with a fire hose and a virtuoso tour de force opening sequence as the household struggles to wake up in the morning. Wisdom's own brand of Jerry Lewis-inspired clowning, with mugging and pratfalls aplenty, is all good clean fun with little or none of the smutty innuendo that characterised the contemporary Carry On series. He carries this film, as he does all his others, solely on the strength of his winningly naïve charm: this is innocent comedy from the days before supermarkets really did wreck all the local businesses, not to mention from the days before The Godfather gave a whole new spin on the comedy value of going to bed with your horse. On the DVD: There are no extra features on this disc at all. Given Wisdom's household-name status and the longevity of these much-loved movies, this seems like a sadly missed opportunity. The 4:3 picture has not been digitally remastered and shows its age, as does the muddy mono soundtrack. Only Ron Goodwin's wonderfully tongue-in-cheek music score comes across reasonably well. --Mark Walker [show more]
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