High and Dry

High and Dry is an apt description of where this picture leaves its moments of excellent humor. Stranded above a morass of soggy sentiment and damp moralizing are the touches that have pushed British comedy beyond popularity to the point of fad.

A running duel between an American mogul and a canny crew of scotch boatmen, High and Dry is best when the Scots are trying to keep the mogul form repossessing a cargo that, by mistake, he gave them for hauling. They are quite casual about the chase, however, always ready to stop for some pheasant poaching, and positively avid to scrap the whole thing, put to shore and have a party. This attitude naturally distresses the mogul.

While the opposing business methods clash they are amusing, but when the picture tries to reconcile them, showing that everyone is really a brick beneath a seemingly loathsome exterior, the result is dreary. In one especially painful scene, Paul Douglas as the mogul, is almost seduced from the business virtues of ruthless efficiency and unbridled avarice that the British evidently find peculiarly American. When a gentle Scottish lass tells him about the beauties of indolence, the mogul seems about to chuck a princely fortune and sign aboard the Scots boat as cabin boy.

But when everyone is just concerned with being rascally, and not in subverting the more cherished tenets of the NAM, the film runs very smoothly. Besides many visual gags, including the boat itself, a leaky tub that floats in a humorous way, there is a cast of usual types for this sort of picture. Of course, a cunning captain, insolent mate, brash little boy and blustering American are fairly stock characters, but these particular actors are good, if not sparkling. The same can be said of the picture.