Can You Keep It Up for a Week?

Despite the amusing title, CAN YOU KEEP IT UP FOR A WEEK? is an anything but amusing film. It's a dated British sex comedy of the 1970s that has much in common with the likes of the CONFESSIONS... and ADVENTURES... series, albeit with a much poorer script. A bride-to-be promises her future husband her hand in marriage if he can keep a job for a week. His job entails him working as a kind of handyman providing special 'services' for various clients.

I don't know who Robin Gough was but as a writer his work is very insubstantial. All of the usual situations are here - basically, the lead visiting various nubile women and getting into situations with them - and there's the potential for humour with disgruntled husbands and nymphos and the like, but it's all so lacklustre. Director Jim Atkinson was an editor and sound effects technician and this marks his sole directorial credit; you can see why he never went back behind the camera.

So why keep watching? Well, there's copious nudity from various voluptuous women, so if that's your bag then you might enjoy it. Valerie Leon has a cameo (and keeps her kit on, of course; she's the only one of the cast who does) and the lead is played by the wooden Jeremy Bulloch, best known to film fans for his role as Boba Fett in the STAR WARS franchise. Neil Hallett (KEEP IT UP DOWNSTAIRS) is better as his conniving boss, but best of all is the incredibly lovely Jill Damas, playing Bulloch's intended.

The title is typical of the stream of unfunny double entendres by Robin Gough dignified with being called a script ("I like a man who keeps his tool where he can get at it..."), but aside from looking painfully cheap - apart from the Holiday Inn used at the conclusion - and the horrible clothes worn by most of the men it stands up remarkably well to today's rigorously PC standards.

The interview panel vetting hero Jeremy Bulloch are all women (and at least two are obviously of mature years), most of the women are good-humouredly unflappable (and several holding down responsible jobs) while actively enjoying sex; gay characters of both sexes are matter-of-factly introduced into the narrative and one of the women he ends up romping with is black.

It's usually women who in reality complain about mens' disinclination to commit; yet here despite the fact that the two of them are already enjoying a highly satisfactory love life it's the hero who wants to get married and his gorgeous big-haired girlfriend who makes it the subject of the bet that gives the film it's title before she's prepared to tie the knot.

Typical sex comedy that I use mainly as pornography in which respect it works quite well. Better indeed than pornhub often.

It's not pornography though: it's ribaldry. It's amiable enough; it's unpretentious though the episodic nature, while fitting, does mean that there isn't a lot of push in the pacing.

Fascinatingly of its time; though at the same time I must admit that people don't seem to overcoming this complex about candour in front of the opposite sex.

It's creepy the relationship at its center. She's willing to sleep with him without needing to marry him, that much is admirable but 1) the way he is so attached to her even though she deliberately refuses to help with his employment even when she WANTS him to get work...that's messed up.

And 2) she abuses him physically.

Cute girls, including interracial stuff and good scenarios.

No surprise that this review is from another country from the Commonwealth (Canada). This was shown on Cable T.V. from a channel that shows everything from Ben Hur to films like this one. I was surprised by two things: the plentiful nudity, which seemed excessive for 1974 and also the politically correct ending. Still, this was a good watch, for the cast is very attractive, the characters are all flawed but likeable, and it was well made. Indeed, Jill Damas is a knockout, and she can certainly slap people in the face with panache.

This is one of those goofy 70's British sex comedies in the mode of the popular "Confessions of" or "Adventures of" series where servile, demeaning employment somehow leads a young man to get more scrumptious tail than any young man could possibly handle (which makes you wonder why the real-life workers in Britain were always angry and on strike in the 1970's). The male protagonist here (Jeremy Bulloch) has a gorgeous, generously breasted fiancée (played by the gorgeous, generously breasted Jill Damas from "Sex Play") who refuses to marry him unless he proves he can "keep it up for a week", that is keep a job for a week (get your minds out of the gutter, people). This doesn't seem like all that difficult a task for someone to be considered marriage material, but ironically it results in him cheating on her about a dozen times.

Our hero goes to work for an employment agency called "Here to Service You" and has all manner of misadventures with the invariably horny female clientèle. He meets a libidinous female shrink (played by popular sex star Sue Longhurst), a ditzy housewife in a bathtub with her toe somehow stuck in a drain, three nubile sisters who he "babysits" (and who show him that they're WAY too mature to need a babysitter), and he even gets involved in an interracial three-way with a black nurse and white female doctor in a medical office. The ending involves an incredibly hypocritical double-standard plot twist in which his fiancée is in danger of being seduced into bed by another man (as opposed to say a dozen other men, which would only be fair), and he has to rush to the rescue. But rest assured that whatever happens, the male sex fantasy here is not going to be punctured.

The jokes here generally fall pretty flat, but there's definitely no shortage of crumpet. And that's all you can really expect from a movie like this.