Analysis
An article in Garden History likened the character of The Revd John Smallwood to that of an eighteenth-century picturesque guru William Gilpin : "The first act of the new reverend is to invite a group of colourful gypsies to reside in the vicarage; the second is to convince an old lady to open her house and grounds to all sorts of poor vagabonds, scruffs and vagrants, characters who bring picturesque values to the noble scene. Eventually, a picturesque economic system based on free donation causes havoc in the village and the nation - the reverend is made a bishop and sent into space, in England's first spaceship. The film revives a character that one can safely imagine as a modern version of Doctor Syntax - cordial, dedicated, stubborn, fearless, not reacting against, but slightly diverging from, the established values of his culture."
Like the other Boulting/Sellers films, Heavens Above! satirises contemporary attitudes and cautiously espouses a socialist ethos, while also showing the possible deleterious side-effects of such ideas, and the all-too-human tendency to take advantage of naive generosity.
The film is daring in its use of profanity for 1963; Sykes' character at one stage utters the line, "What if it pisses it with rain?".
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