Harold Smith Reviews

Popcorn.co.uk

'The Full Monty' and 'Whatever Happened To Harold Smith' are both set in Sheffield, although sadly that's where the comparisons end. 'Harold Smith' feels like a TV movie that's escaped from its natural habitat. The big screen is far less forgiving than its small screen relative, though, and the shapeless, undynamic script leaves you wondering why such a talented cast ever signed on. (Maybe it's because they were signing on at the time.) Frankly, employing the likes of Tom Courtenay and David Thewlis to act in this frivolous exercise is akin to getting Marco Pierre White to do the catering for a chimpanzee's tea party. The wafer-thin storyline is set in the late 70s, during the heyday of disco, punk and, er, Uri Geller - spoonbender extraordinaire. Michael Legge stars as Vince Smith, a humble accounts clerk whose mundane young life changes when his father, Harold Smith (the ever-wonderful Courtenay), becomes a national cause célèbre when his magic act has fatal consequences for some of the audience at his show in an old folk's home. As well as Smith senior's run-in with the law, Smith Jr becomes involved with a group of punks and experiences the pain of puppy love when he falls for the cool girl in the office, Joanna (Laura Fraser, who's a little too old for this kind of thing). The film meanders along with the urgency of a lame tortoise, and the only redeeming features are Stephen Fry's sex education lessons to his precocious daughter and the nostalgic soundtrack. Never mind Harold Smith, whatever happened to funny British comedies?

The Observer- March 12 2001

The answer to the question Whatever Happened to Harold Smith? is quite uninteresting. He's a retired, mild-mannered lower-middle-class Yorkshireman (Tom Courtenay), who in late 1977 rediscovers his childhood gifts of telepathy and telekinesis, becomes a national celebrity and wins back his promiscuous wife (Lulu). His son is a dim, bored legal clerk, torn between disco and punk rock, and in love with a spirited lass who wants to go off to London, which along with the presence of Courtenay provides echoes of Billy Liar.

The answer to the question, what is happening to the film's director, Peter Hewitt - the man who made Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey and The Borrowers - is slightly worrying in the light of this harmless but ill-conceived piece of whimsy. Probably he just needed a job and seized on Ben Steiner's unpolished script. Somebody, however, should have noticed in a film obsessed with a particular period that for Harold's son to have had posters of Saturday Night Fever on his bedroom wall and to strike Travolta poses in 1977 he would indeed have had to be prescient. The movie didn't open in Britain until March 1978. The funniest moments involve the home life of the heroine's father, a smug liberal academic played by Stephen Fry.

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