Criminally underrated

IMO "Life at the Top" is a criminally underrated sequel to "Room" . I think that many people have a problem with it because they think the movie dulled the Joe Lampton character , but it was exactly Braine's intention to show that once our man would have reached the .. well .. top , he would have not been able to consider himself fulfilled . We already knew from "Room" what opinion his future father in law had of him .

"Life" seems to be more script-driven ( the dialogue is really biting and subtle ) when "Room" relies more on Jack Clayton's superb direction . The main problem with "Life" is that on the director chair , Ted Kotcheff proved to be nowhere as good as his predecessor . But all the characters come out as more multi-dimensional and fleshed out in "Life" , particularly Susan ( Jean Simmons is a huge improvement over Heather Sears ) and Mr.Brown , who now doesn't appear to be a completely negative figure , after all . Honor Blackman is also brilliant as Nora , who is a sort of female counterpart of Joe in terms of ambition and frequent lack of scruples , but much more decisive and determined .
Larry does again an awesome job as Joe .

It's a pity the movie wasn't a success , since there were so many great performances to reward . At the end of the day it has always much more to do with the popularity of your picture . "Room " was one of the biggest movies of 1959 and .. voilà , Hermione Baddeley got nominated for a role that wasn't even 3 minutes long .

Now don't get me wrong , I'm not claiming "Life" as good as "Room" . But I believe it would have been so , had Clayton directed it .