Half a Sixpence is a 1967 British musical film directed by George Sidney starring Tommy Steele, Julia Foster and Cyril Ritchard.

The screenplay by Beverley Cross is adapted from his book for the 1963 stage musical of the same name, which was based on Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul, the 1905 novel by H. G. Wells.

He becomes friends with Harry Chitterlow, an actor-playwright, who discovers that Artie is heir to a fortune left him by his grandfather.

The movie is flamboyantly colourful [and] wildly active: hardly anyone holds still for a single line, and the characters – in the ancient tradition of musicals – live on the verge of bursting into improbable song.

The songs themselves, trite, gay, and thoroughly meaningless, make absolutely no concession to anything that was happened in popular music in the last 10 years ... some of it is quite beautiful to watch.... it is nice to have a musical photographed not on a sound stage, but in outdoor England ... but most of the time one wonders where anyone found the energy to put on this long, empty, frenetic extravaganza ...

"[12] Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News that "for all Gillian Lynne's high-stepping choreography, the film is about as light and as graceful on its feet as an elephant.

It is the gay Henley regatta, with Kipps crewing for the Ascot set, slicing the Thames in a racing shell.

"[13] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times remarked that "Half a Sixpence at Grauman's Chinese Theatre is, almost uniquely these days, a picture of innocence (or, if you will, simple-mindedness) and for all its flaws there are those who will respond gratefully to this excursion into the primer-story past.

My regret is that the machineries of film-making have rendered the lighter-than-air as heavy as lead and have surrendered innocence to technical sophistication.

He is, in fact, a very good song-and-dance man, the only member of his generation who bears comparison with Gene Kelly and Dan Dailey ... [George Sidney's] timing tends to lag, his sight gags telegraph ahead, and his songs drag.

Clifford Terry of the Chicago Tribune opined:American audiences are beginning to get the idea that if you've seen one Tommy Steele movie, you've seen them both.

Perhaps the proceedings weren't so bankrupt of charm and originality when Steele played the Arthur Kipps role on the London and Broadway stage for four years, safely out of range of the cinematic close-ups which put into Panavision perspective that personified-balloon face and set of teeth that would make Cass Daley completely Crestfallen.

Of course he can't control his physiognomy, but he could do something about his general deportment, in which he matches Sandy Dennis in the mannerisms department by strutting and prancing, rolling his eyes, tossing his head, and twitching around so much he looks like a third base coach with a bad case of the shingles.

Whereas the play was based on H. G. Wells' novel, "Kipps," its successor engenders excitement more in keeping with a screen adaptation of the Keynesian theory.

The cornerstone of any good musical, one would assume, is the score, but David Heneker's songs are so incredibly and unanimously nondescript that the wedding reception sequence could be interchanged with the "Happiest Millionaire" barroom number with no one the wiser.

"[18] Channel 4 calls it "undeniably colourful and annoyingly energetic" and adds, "there is plenty of flash, bang and wallop, but very little warmth or soul, the hapless star attempting to carry the film by grinning goonishly throughout.