Summer Holiday (1963) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by molly ★★★★½ 1

  young cliff richard in a silver mesh shirt for half the film..... instant 4.5 stars

• Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★ 2

  Cinematic Time Capsule1963 Marathon - Film #12

  "Load the bus boys, here we come!"

  What do you get when you cross the singing & dancing of West Side Story with a cheezy Elvis-styled movie, and then crank the silliness up to 11?

  Surprisingly, you get Britain’s second biggest box office hit of 1963.

  Cliff Richard and his mates persuade London Transport to lend them a double-decker bus, and then they hit the road for a madcap Euro-Trip adventure.

  This was Peter Yates first directing gig, and it’s hard to believe that he went from this goofy teen movie to Steve McQueen’s BULLITT in a mere five years.

  BONUS POINTS to the teenaged Jeremy ‘Boba Fett’ Bulloch for showing off his fully formed musical theater chops.

  🎶 ”Put on your dancin’ shoes!” 🎶

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 1963 Ranked

• Review by liam f ★★★ 1

  if the prospect of seeing Sir Cliff Richard wearing an ill-fitting speedo isn't an incentive to watch this film, I don't know what is

• Review by Sophie Farrell ★★★½ 4

  Summer Holiday is a musical that is quintessentially British. Its genuinely lovely and charming as well as being just good fun. Summer Holiday was designed as a vehicle for one of Britain's most popular music stars, Cliff Richard, and is widely regarded as being his best film. Prior to watching Summer Holiday, I was really only aware of it's theme song as it was often used in adverts to sell holidays. I wasn't even aware that this song originated from a film until I was in high school. Having now watched this film, I can say that I enjoyed it a great deal. It does have it's flaws but still manages to be a perfectly charming piece of entertainment.

  The…

• Review by Fint ★★★ 3

  Do people still sing, as they head off in the car together, "We're all going on a summer holiday, no more working for a week or two"? When I was growing up, this singalong was as much a part of the departure routine as packing sandwiches in tin foil for the journey. Athens was never the destination. A wind-swept Irish beach was the likely endpoint. I feel I am very much showing my age here.

  Summer Holiday is no great shakes but it does have its compensations, such as the loveable bundle of energy that was Una Stubbs. The humour is generally lame and the film can't decide whether it's traditional (a Viennese waltz number) or yoof-oriented (gentle rock'n'roll). But…

• Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★½

  I remember hearing Mark Radcliffe on the radio a few years back recalling how one of his young daughters had come home from her friend's house proclaiming that she had just watched the best film ever. Asking her to explain it to him, he quickly realised that this was no Marvel epic. Instead it was the story of a group of boys and girls travelling across Europe in a London bus. It was of course, the 50 odd year old Cliff Richard musical Summer Holiday.

  And it was reassuring to learn that little kids today would feel this was the best film ever, because I'm fairly sure that's how my friends and I felt about it in the 1980s too.…

• Review by Stephen M ★★½ 2

  This lighthearted British musical featuring teen idol Cliff Richard was initially fun and appealing. But then it grew tiresome - overly wholesome with the song-and-dance numbers predictably similar as the film - which is based on a holiday bus tour through Europe - goes from one country and episode to another. Occasionally his band The Shadows shows up to play a number. There's also some corny subplots that weigh it down. Enormously popular when first released, it's hasn't aged well.

  Cliff Richards had one hit song after another in the late 50s through the early 60s in Britain in the pre-Beatles era. He was touted as the British Elvis Presley, although his persona - both in performance and personally -…

• Review by Peter Spencer ★★★

  Would've been good without the songs.
  Don't get me wrong; I like a little musical, but it takes up most of the dialogue in the film, making it a somewhat cringing storyline - and don't get me started with the mom! 😖
  I think the Summer Holiday song would've been enough.

  But the rest though was a little charming.
  And I do like the idea of a double-decker bus as a mobile hotel - like a caravan, but bigger!

• Review by MichaelEternity ★★★½

  In short: "A Hard Day's Night" dolloped with "Young Girls of Rochefort", cut by a splash of "Spice World", even though it pre-dates all three films. A lollipop of young-popular-musicians-in-the-'60s cross-promotional mugging and cutesy escapism, the likes of which were legion in that era. This is one of four starring famous British teen-pop hitmakers Cliff Richard and The Shadows, whose music is among the best-selling in British history and whose movies nearly outgrossed even James Bond during these years, all this despite me, a longtime music fan and '60s pop connoisseur, having never even heard of these guys until now. Richard was regarded for a while as the British Elvis, though he's much cheekier. He and his three plucky bandmates…

• Review by lav ★★

  can’t believe the three singing girls who were making their way to greece for a show were donna and the dynamos

• Review by Richmond Hill ★★★ 1

  When does today’s plastic pop become yesterday’s nostalgic charm?

  It’s not an exact formula and certainly not an automatic process - whether Spiceworld has yet attained charm remains to be seen and I’ve no idea as to a contemporary example - but this 55-year old bright and fluffy piece sits surprisingly comfortably somewhere between Michel Legrand-style sung-through works and superior Hollywood fare (it’s fairly obviously a local attempt at Britannic-Americana).

  The music is appealingly undemanding - catchy to be sure - and the feel of ‘let’s put the show on right here’ works well enough. Richard is the least likely London Transport depot worker imaginable, but one didn’t come to this for realism.

  It’s daft, thin, silly and chaste, but Yates fills the CinemaScope screen amiably enough with the classic ‘six people in a line’ formula, Ross choreographs with zest and Wilcox splashes enough gaudy colour around to convince you’ve been lifted. Cinematic Aspartame.

• Review by Brennan ★★★

  a heartfelt thank you to whoever decided to put cliff richard in a mesh shirt for half the movie