Vintage Wine

The members of the Popinot family of French champagne tycoons suspect that the widowed head of the family Charles Popinot is keeping a mistress in Rome and generally living a wild life. Unbeknownst to them he has happily re-married and had a son with a much younger woman. She believes he is twenty years younger than he really is and is shocked when his relatives including his mother, grown-up sons and granddaughter arrive in Italy.

Oh darlings; this is a kindly little story about an gentleman in his early sixties (Seymour Hicks) whose family have decided that he must end his profligate ways and come back home to live in his family's vineyard home. Unsurprisingly when we meet his family - elderly mother, sister, two sons and a really quite annoying grand-daughter - he regales against this proposition and returns to Rome. It's only there that we discover he has a secret and when his family have a guardian appointed to stop him further disposing of the family fortune it all, well, hits the fan. Hicks is on good form, though the part is hardly demanding, the humour a touch on the repetitive side and the comedy not too farcical to make one cringe in (not so eager) anticipation. Miles Malleson (bedecked in a cracking beard - who was 47 at the time of filming) makes for a interesting choice as one of his sons, as does Kynaston Reeves as the other (who was 42) but that all just adds to the daftness of the whole thing. Forgettable, I'd say - and maybe twenty minutes too long - but it raises a smile now and again if you've a forgiving nature....