Sometimes you wish the Germans had won.

Rating: 9/10 (16 April 2006)

People are moved to watch films like this for the same reason they slowdown to gawp at road accidents. There's a sickly fascination to be had. A there-but-for-the-grace-of-fate-go-I-ism. It is so overblown, so saccharine-sweet, so bloody-goody-two-shoes, that you can't believe it's happening. That's why it's usually shown at Christmas, the only time appetites and sensibilities are robust enough to prevail. It's like an over-stuffed turkey, a great pile of mince pies dusted with icing-sugar, a portion of pudding too big to eat never mind digest. Seem-splitting, constitution-challenging, hernia-inducing, gut-busting feelgoodness. Nobody swears, nobody farts, nobody has a run of snot, or halitosis, or spits crumbs at others while they're talking. Nobody leaves a floater in the toilet. None of these are her favourite things.
They're all so practically perfect in every way, Mary Poppins wouldn't get a look in. Which is just as well, because she was shot down by ack-ack over Dresden and died from a perforated brolly.
People like this only ever existed in the imagination of Rogers and Hammerstein. They're not real. They're a cartoon exaggeration, a benign behavioural tumour grown monstrous with self-delight. You know it. Yet something inside you still wants to believe it is possible. It could never happen to you, though - only others. Like a road accident. Better drive on quick; Christmas arrives earlier every year.
More sherry trifle, anyone?
(BURP)
'Scuse me.