If only air travel still bore any resemblance to the early 60's glitz and glamour on display in 1963's THE V.I.P.s.
We spend a day at a London airport, mostly nestled comfortably in the sixties glitz of the VIP lounge as a gaggle of wealthy passengers get ready for departure.
When a massive fog bank rolls in and traps everyone overnight, inconvenience abounds.
Richard Burton is uber-suave business tycoon Paul Andros, lavishing his wife Frances (Elizabeth Taylor) in jewels just as she is about to depart to New York.
Paul doesn't know that their friend Marc (Louis Jordan, dripping French elegance and charm) is also aboard, and that he and Frances are running away together.
Rod Taylor (Hotel) is Australian businessman Les Mangrum , who MUST get to NYC for a huge business deal or lose everything. An impossibly young Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey, Gosford Park) is Mangrum's secretary, whose madly in love with her boss.
Margaret Rutherford (Murder She Said) won an Academy Award for her performance as a Duchess on her last financial legs, running to America to raise funds for her soon to be lost manor.
Orson Welles has a minor role as a film director who has to get out of the country by midnight to avoid a huge tax bill.
Needless to say the fog seriously derails their best laid plans. It's all very 60's, old fashioned drama of the "Grand Hotel" variety and a hell of a lot of fun if you're in the right mood.
Picture "This Is Us" with a lot more furs, jewels and Rolls Royces around.
Taylor and Burton are clearly having a blast as a battling couple in their second of eleven films they would make together. Rutherford is pretty funny, Rod Taylor's never been more smooth (regardless of that accent that comes and goes) and Smith is excellent.
A massive box office hit back in the day, you can see it foreshadowing the similar, but superior "Airport" some seven years later.
It's trashy, dramatic fun from another era that we'll give a B-.
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