Favourites really can be very odd. A favourite film can be
forged by a moment in time as much as they can be by the greatness of the film.
For instance, Sink the Bismarck will
always hold a very special place in my heart because, as boys, my brother and I
watched it endlessly, delighting in aspects of it which, now, we must admit are
in fact a bit lacking.
So it was that I was encouraged to watch One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing with a
friend who adored it. She had fallen in love with it as a child, and the film has
a great pedigree. Directed by Robert Stevenson, the maker of such family
favourites as Bedknobs and Broomsticks,
The Love Bug and the absolutely
classic Mary Poppins, it has all of
the feel of those classics: a great British cast (Peter Ustinov, Derek Nimmo
and Helen Hayes are the leads), that peasouper London setting and a positively
madcap plot.
