Beat! Beat! Beat!

There are a lot of comments on what a ridiculous movie this was. And those comments describe this movie perfectly. Yes, it's true. But get real! This movie is supposed to be ridiculous. The plot of the movie is about an English band who tour the United States. (In 1966, the English Invasion still ruled the radio and British groups were still being mobbed by screaming fans!)

Herman's Hermits come to the States and are greeted by wild screaming fans. The frenzy gets so far out of hand that NASA gets swamped with demands that the name of the latest rocket to be launched be changed to "Herman's Hermits".

Most musicals involve a screwball plot. HOLD ON is no exception. Only a complete idiot would expect a "meaningful plot" in a movie like this. It is pure escapist entertainment played up to a ridiculous level.

I saw the movie in 1967, which was a long time ago. So I don't remember if there were any bad guys in the plot of not. What I do remember is that the real plot of this movie is the showcasing of the latest (in 1966) sounds by Herman's Hermits, who at that time were close to taking second place to the Beatles in popularity.

I gave the movie a 7 because it was a movie from the mid 1960s that may be outdated by today's standards. Some of the comedy of the time may not be so funny today. Think BEWITCHED (1964 TV series) versus BEWITCHED (2005) and you'll get the drift.

In its brief vogue of popularity, Herman's Hermits tried to keep the bubblegum popularity of the Beatles after the Beatles and the rest of the culture went psychedelic and counterculture. In that they were successful as long as the vogue for them lasted. Even today lead singer Peter Blair Dennis No one enjoys a lot of popularity on the nostalgia circuit among his aging fans.

Some have said that Hold On! is a ripoff of A Hard Day's Night and it follows that pattern to some degree. Actually it's more like an extended version of a Monkey's television show. And down to today you can still see pop groups still using this model, just look at the Jonas Brothers television series on the Disney Channel.

In a whirlwind tour of the USA, Herman's Hermits becomes the victims of a publicity seeking actress played by Sue Ane Langdon, they get a NASA rocket named for them, and No one gets himself involved with young society girl Shelley Fabares whose mother has bought the Hermits for one of her society charity events. Some of these things don't quite come off as well as the others.

The aging fans of Herman's Hermits will remember Hold On! with nostalgia. What the film does lack is any of the identifiable songs from the boys back in the day. The score is hardly that of A Hard Day's Night or even Help!. But the film is a pleasant enough diversion and I don't think those who watch it are expecting too much.

In the 1950's and 1960's, MGM made a slew of teen-exploitation pictures, some of them okay, some laughably bad.

"Hold On" is neither the best nor the worst of these, and it does have some redeeming qualities. First on the list of redeeming qualities, of course, would be the presence of Herman's Hermits, who were white-hot in 1965 and 1966. The songs are, for the most part, pretty good (the notable exception being "The George and Dragon"); "Wild Love," which closes the film, feels like it should have been a hit but wasn't. "Make Me Happy," sung by co-star Shelley Fabares backed by the Hermits, is a masterpiece of mid-60's girl-enslaving-herself-to-boy songwriting, and is sort of funny today as a result.

The plot, as other writers have noted, is preposterous, and involves not only a NASA spacecraft, but a subplot involving fainting girls and another involving a (never-seen) supersonic transport capable of whisking Herman from Los Angeles to Cape Kennedy in something like an hour. And the cast is full of familiar television faces of the '60's, which was cheap of MGM at the time, but has a certain charm now.

Like "A Hard Day's Night," the film attempts to give us the feeling of a period where rock stars made girls scream and faint. We get only glimpses of that, but it drips with other period detail. "Look, there's a '65 Plymouth!" "Look at her hair." "I remember dresses like that." All in all,"Hold On" stands as a rather contrived piece of film-making, but an interesting period piece.

I found Hold On to be fascinatingly inappropriate. The filmmakers obviously wanted to cash in on the British Invasion and the success of the Beatles movies, but they clearly were totally out of touch with the youth culture of the time. They made a movie in 1966 starring one of the most popular groups of the 60s, and everything about the film screams the 50s: the writing, the direction, even the incidental music on the soundtrack. I don't blame Arthur Lubin, who was 65 years old at the time and a veteran of 1940s and 1950s films and 1950s and 1960s TV shows. That's exactly what Hold On reminds me of: a peculiar blend of a 1950s movie and a 1960s TV show. It has the look, the sound, even the feel. The producers should have hired someone who had a better feel for the pop music culture of the 1960s. Imagine the Beatles dropped in the middle of a beach party movie, or a Rock Hudson/Doris Day film. Except, of course, the Beatles could act.

British pop group Herman's Hermits land in Los Angeles to play the Rose Bowl, but what they really want to do is see the sights and meet some girls "to talk to". They're pursued by a scientist collecting data on the band for NASA, who are thinking of using the group's moniker on the new spaceship, a would-be actress who wants to link her name with theirs to generate publicity, and a blonde Shelley Fabares who wants the group to perform at her mother's charity event at the snooty Ocean Club. The Hermits sing many hookless tunes, one of which is entitled "A Must To Avoid", which may well have served as this film's subtitle. Although Southern California looks lovely (like a big, shiny department store), there's no satirical wit in the writing, and Herman's Hermits have no personality, no distinction, and no charisma. Fabares gets the only good song, "Make Me Happy", and her sweetly out-of-it presence is a nice distraction to the screaming teenage fans, who are mostly shot swarming from below the knees. *1/2 from ****