Smashing Time

I can't believe Leonard Maltin dissed this picture -- it's a rare gem of trippy brilliance, influential as hell on arbiters of style like "Absolutely Fabulous" and the "Austin Power" series. Lynn Redgrave (!), fresh out of "Georgy Girl", bumbles through looking like a great big blonde lovable cow in a succession of astonishing wigs, while her costar Rita Tushingham (!!) veers back and forth from frumpy/frowny to slapstick/mime to The Face of the 60's. The humor is broad and scatological, but cutting when its satire -- sample song lyric: "I can't sing, but I'm young!!" If you can find it, grab it.

WARNING : This is a very silly film. :D . Therefore, watching it in the right state of mind will make you laugh a lot. You will be irritated if in the wrong mood.

The story of two northern lasses, Yyvone and Brenda (Redgrave & Tushingham) who come to London to get down with the cool hepcats. The film documents in astonishing cinema-verite style the trials and tribulations of late 60's living and partying. There is fantastic irony in some sections of the film, particularly the Gauche perfume adverts that Brenda does..truly astonishing in fact - examples of post-modernism at it's finest. Michael York is wonderfully hammy as the swinging photographer who weaves in and out of Yyvone and Bren's lives on a regular basis with only thought of himself.

Two fantastic restaurant sequences as well...you just can't beat a good food fight! I must admit I've always had a huge crush on Rita Tushingham, which helped me through some of the lamer comedy moments, but overall it's light enough to be enjoyable.

Oh yeah, the music is absolutely awful, but I think that's intended. At least I hope so..please tell me it's meant to be a parody??

6/10.

As someone else has said regarding this film 'I could have done with less slapstick and more satire'. Yep. The satire is most definitely there and it's funny but the slapstick is lame warmed over nonsense and should just be fast forwarded through. Redgrave and Tushingham are great fun together and the supporting cast all pitch in nicely, ghastly stereotypes excepted. It's a film I have long been curious about and now that I've seen it I feel as if I've been rewarded with a bright and zippy laugh out loud at times comedy (somewhat of a rare commodity these days) and an affectionate look at what I suppose is now a lost world.

I was living in London when this film opened, and it now seems an oddly accurate time capsule of the period, somewhere between trendy and tatty. Critics hated the film for trying to create a female Laurel and Hardy, but now it's the colours, the clothes and the attitude that seems right (although it's hard to forgive those helium-voiced gay stereotypes). Trivia note; the character names and places, pieced together, form most of the first verse of 'Jabberwocky', suggesting the intention to create a new Alice in Wonderland.

'Smashing time' is a well-made English comedy, set in the famous Swinging London of the mid-Sixties. And shot in the same city in the same period, adding extra authenticity.

This film is just fun, without any pretense. The hilarious interaction between Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave, successfully coupled as girlfriends, makes it work. Some of its scenes are clearly inspired by Laurel and Hardy.

'Girlfriends', I said. This friendship between the two heterosexual female leads is devoid of any sex. Such a formula wouldn't probably sell today, but back in the Sixties it did. A friendship of this kind makes this film's core.