Although some people like to call "The Knack" one of the best comedies of the sixties I don't agree with them. It's just a very silly, unorganized, hectic and boring farce about four beatniks running around and talking weird nonsense all the time. Especially the ugly duckling Rita Tushingham is getting on your nerves pretty soon.
If people are doing things like that in a 1960's movie and are reading quotations from Karl Marx or a Mao bible, it's probably a Jean-Luc Godard film. If you leave away Marx and Mao and add hundreds of stupid jokes in a row that are all falling flat, it's probably a Richard Lester movie.
"The Knack" is very much like Lester's Beatles movies - great music throughout, this time provided by a rousing John Barry score with a great theme tune, but no script, bad acting and a big bore... in Germany we would call that "beknackt" (sic!) - simply stupid!
If you are looking for entertaining British movies from and about the sixties, there are much better ones. Check out Antonioni's "Blow-up", the James Bond movies and it's parodies like "Casino Royale" or the Harry Palmer films, "The Thomas Crown Affair" or the kitchen sink dramas of the early sixties like "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "Wild Honey" or "Four in the Morning". Or take "Beat Girl", a rather unknown 1960's mod-flick with another great Barry score.
If people are doing things like that in a 1960's movie and are reading quotations from Karl Marx or a Mao bible, it's probably a Jean-Luc Godard film. If you leave away Marx and Mao and add hundreds of stupid jokes in a row that are all falling flat, it's probably a Richard Lester movie.
"The Knack" is very much like Lester's Beatles movies - great music throughout, this time provided by a rousing John Barry score with a great theme tune, but no script, bad acting and a big bore... in Germany we would call that "beknackt" (sic!) - simply stupid!
If you are looking for entertaining British movies from and about the sixties, there are much better ones. Check out Antonioni's "Blow-up", the James Bond movies and it's parodies like "Casino Royale" or the Harry Palmer films, "The Thomas Crown Affair" or the kitchen sink dramas of the early sixties like "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", "Wild Honey" or "Four in the Morning". Or take "Beat Girl", a rather unknown 1960's mod-flick with another great Barry score.