Folly to Be Wise is a 1952 British comedy film directed by Frank Launder and starring Alastair Sim, Elizabeth Allan, Roland Culver, Colin Gordon, Martita Hunt and Edward Chapman.

[1] The film follows the efforts of a British Army chaplain attempting to recruit entertainment acts to perform for the troops and the complications that ensue when he does.

He resolves to try and secure something more entertaining for the troops and decides to copy the idea of a brains trust, as in a popular BBC radio programme, where panellists answer questions from the audience.

Trying to avoid anything controversial, Paris forbids any discussion of politics or religion and begins with some innocuous questions about cows chasing after trains and if the Moon is inhabited.

Desperate to restore a sense of propriety, he draws the proceedings to a close, and announces that next week they will return to classical music with a string quartet.

Worried about Mr Prout, who has disappeared and has been drinking heavily, the others follow him back to his house, where they mistakenly come to believe that he is going to throw himself over the cliffs, whereas he is merely planning a bit of quiet painting.

While noting that the film did not "succeed in building into towering proportions the fragile theme of what makes a marriage tick" the cast had made it "all worth while".

[7] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Bridie's observations on marriage, his digs at the brains trusters, are not amusing enough to sustain the fim, which has been put together with disappointing slacknes.

The various members of the splendid cast seem all too aware that they are marking time between those marvellous moments when army chaplain Alastair Sim loses control of his squabbling panellists, but they are powerless to raise the tempo.