The film is set in Liverpool in the mid-1950s. The story concerns 11-year-old Bud and his loving mother and siblings. He lives a life rich in imagination, centred on family relationships, church, and the struggles of a shy boy at school. Music and snatches of movie dialogue allow him to enrich his narrow physical environment. "Together these fragments", wrote Stephen Holden in the ''New York Times'', "evoke a postwar England starved for beauty, fantasy and a place to escape."