The Family Way

The Family Way is a tale about a couple of Cockney families whose psychological problems are solved in 105 laff-filled minutes. One father loves his daughter to distraction; the other bullies his son out of house and home. The mothers stand at the ringside fretting with jealousy or issuing reprimands, teeth-clenched. Meanwhile their offspring fall in love, get married, and don't live happily ever after because they can't consummate their marriage.

The movie is not completely tear-free. John and Roy Boulting, who directed it, favor a raining-in-the-sunshine effect. And of course with that irrepressible old crybaby John Mills on hand, even a crisp comedy would turn milksoppy. Mills probably has a provisional clause in his movie contracts: "I shall produce X-hundred buckets of tears on screen, or else ..." His daughter Hayley Mills isn't underproductive herself, but she's vivacious enough to get away with it. Remember how she got away with Polyanna, made from the book that was so bad it made the Bobbsey Twins look good?

Unfortunately Miss Mills is tied to a long-faced husband (Hywel Bennett). He takes a bite out of life and looks like he's swallowing a rotten cucumber. But his brother (Murray Head) is a winner. He's the kind who eats experience up, swallows it with delight, licks his lips, and looks up smiling. It's hard to see why scriptwriter Bill Naughton didn't make the happy ending Miss Mills running away with her husband's brother instead of Miss Mills making love to her husband. But Mr. Naughton, like so many others, insists that cerebral guy is great (you know he's cerebral because he reads at the breakfast table and plays symphonies in the bedroom), while the energetic boy with an appetite for life is second rate. (He rides a motorbike, and only frivolous people ride motorbikes.) Why this prediction for peaked pseudo-Hamlet types?

Bennett does what he can--which isn't much--with the hero's part. Murray Head is a lot sexier. And Miss Mills, though she doesn't look terribly different from the way she did when she was 14, is sexiest of all. But the best part of the Boulting Brothers' movie is the Cockney accent--soft, slurred, turning every remark into a lyric. Other than that, it's sedate. Hayley Mills' transition into womanhood has yet to be indicated on the screen, no matter what the publicity says. Take the whole family.