Gerry gives a monologue about living in Liverpool and meeting the band members overlaid on top of shots of children playing and mingling in the street.

Before the art instructor enters the room and tells everyone to get to work, Dodie (Julie Samuel) reminds Gerry to come up with a good song to play at the beat competition.

Gerry arrives home to join an orchestral rehearsal with Aunt Lil and company before retiring to his room to play "She's the Only Girl for Me".

After Gerry and the Pacemakers' successful 1964 trip to America, manager Brian Epstein toyed with the idea of creating a film for the band.

[5] Writer David Franden was hired in his place when Warren proved unable to complete a script despite "downing bottles of whisky".

These locations included the Mountwood ferry on the River Mersey, the Albert Dock, The Cavern Club, Frank Hessy's music store, and the Locarno ballroom.

[8] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This attempt to repeat the success formula of A Hard Day's Night without the Beatles and without Dick Lester's lively up-to-the-minute direction, doesn't come off – despite speeded-up photography, silent film titles and the forced exuberance of Gerry and the Pacemakers playing and singing anywhere and everywhere from a stately home to a toilet-fittings warehouse.

In the competition finale, this group sound, and look, like conservative classicists by comparison with some of their uninhibitedly moronic rivals – not that much can be heard, at this juncture, above the screaming hysteria of the adolescent audience.

"[9] Eugene Archer of The New York Times wrote: "In Ferry Cross the Mersey, the British pop rock group known as Gerry and the Pacemakers have made an unabashed imitation of the Beatles.

Chasing the quartet of Liverpool lads through the predictable mobs of screaming adolescents, the director, Jeremy Summers, makes a big thing of the fast action camera.

Using the device that gave the long-haired nonconformists a high point in a five-minute play period, he shows the willing Gerry Marsden hopping out of bed, dressing, brushing his teeth and rushing off at a record-breaking pace.

"[10] BoxOffice wrote: "Produced by Michael Holden, the screenplay by David Franden has a stronger plot than the Beatles' film, being based partly on Gerry Marsden's success story, but will have less appeal except to the younger fans, especially those who collect their recordings.

However, director Jeremy Summers maintains a lively pace throughout with time out for a few songs, considerable horseplay by Marsden and his three colleagues, just a dash of romance and a whirlwind chase climax, complete with what looks like the old Keystone Kops, a sequence that any age group will howl at.

Jimmy Savile, a zany disk jockey, appears as himself, as does Cilla Black, a top British thrush, who sings one song and utters a few lines with a pallid personality and dubious success.

T. P. McKenna scores as the manager and Mona Washbourne, Eric Barker, Deryck Guyler, Patricia Lawrence and George A. Cooper bring a little of their professional expertise to bear on unrewarding roles.

Most of the humor is naive in the extreme but director Summers gives the events as much pep as possible and has extracted some good fun from the frantic car chase sequences.