It's obvious why the movie of Lucky Jim was a terrible failure

"Lucky Jim" is a comic novel, as David Lodge notes in the intro essay, but only in a sense. It's not comic in the Shakespearean mode in that the happy ending, so-called, is only Jim's. Margaret's still out in the cold. And by its very nature, steeped in luck, it's not really a satisfying comic conclusion - Jim Dixon (as Lodge notes, he's always called Dixon in the novel) does not "earn" the happy resolution but it's handed to him, by luck or fate, if you will, but I'd say actually by the hand of the author. So, in the end, Dixon gets the pretty girl and everyone else goes along in the pettiness and misery. And will Dixon be happy? More important, will he make Christine happy? Obviously not, as there's nothing in his character that suggests kindness, benevolence, or ambition. Well, the novel is very funny in stretches and in certain scenes. Lodge notes, however, that the movie was a terrible failure, and it's obvious, from this distance, why that was so. These scenes are funny when narrated by Kingsley Amis, and they would not be funny, merely loutish, when acted or filmed. A true comic novel has to be funny and emotionally satisfying. Lucky Jim is funny but not emotionally satisfying. I think to love this novel you have to have grown up with it, you have to remember being knocked off your pins when you first read it. Today, it would evoke some laughs, as well as many winces, especially at the blatant sexism and the latent classism, but it by no means feels revolutionary and we would certainly hope that Amis today would not be considered the voice of a generation, angry or otherwise.