Too Many Crooks

With a bevy of popular English comedy character actors of the day one can just imagine the audience of shopgirls, clerks and factory workers laughing themselves silly at this knockabout comedy. Although very much of its time and place, it's still amusing today, even a classic of its kind, principally thanks to Terry-Thomas's incomparable mugging. George Cole does a nice turn as Fingers, the chronically inept would-be master criminal ,who leads his gang of Cockney villains in a scheme to kidnap the daughter of a shifty businessman, Billy Gordon (Terry-Thomas) but mistakenly get his wife. Lucy (Brenda De Banzie).instead. When Gordon refuses to pay the ransom Lucy snaps into gear and shows the gang how to get Billy's money.

As always with this sort of comedy, it’s the characters who make the film a success. Fans of classic ensemble British comedies of the 1950s will be well-pleased by Too Many Crooks whilst Mario Zampi who had directed Terry-Thomas with Peter Sellers in 1957 in The Naked Truth keeps things moving along nicely.

 

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