Another Guinness?

As an Ealing Studios/Alec Guinness follow up to The Horse's Mouth, I watched A Run for Your Money. This is a very different movie. The Horse's Mouth is dark. A Run for Your Money is, more than anything, sweet.

Two young Welsh miners, Tom and Dy Jones, win a newspaper prize. They will go to London, where newspaper columnist Alec Guinness will show them London, take them to a rugby match and give them 100 pounds each. This is not how it works out. One miner, the handsome Dy (short for David), falls in with a pretty confidence woman, out for the money. Tom is left with both of their hats, and finds an old friend, a drunken Welsh harper. They can't find each other, and Alec Guinness can't find either of them, most of the time. As they say in the TV Guide, "Hilarity ensues".

Not really hilarity, but a great amount of good humor. There are sweet Welsh accents, songs and jokes. One running gag involves the number of Tom and David Jones in Wales. As a result, Tom and Dy are called Tom and Dy #9. Many Welsh sport nicknames like this to distinguish them from others of the same name, and in one scene, Tom and David Jones are paged. All the Toms and Davids respond as "Tom Ice Cream" and "Davey the Fish".

Our heroes make it out of London with honor dignity and most of the prize money intact. They are portrayed as innocents, but not saps. They were never in much peril, and they end up on top. This much niceness will not appeal to everyone. Not everyone wants to hear a Welsh tenor singing to a harp, or a drunk Welshman orating a blessing and a curse. Not everybody will find the comparative study of English accents delightful.

As for me, I loved it. I'm going to watch another Ealing comedy (without Guinness) next week: Whiskey Galore.