Amiable dim British comedy about a German student who goes to Cambridge - Hardy Kruger was hot stuff at the time due to The One That Got Away. A German in England isn't really high concept, at least not here. He misunderstands some slang - that's about as much fish gets out of water. The original idea was for a cockney kid to go the Cambridge - that might've had more point.
Cambridge is full of prats as depicted here, so I guess that's accurate? They have japes, smoke pipes, wear sweaters, drive old cars, play dress ups, occasionally go to a lecture.
The cast includes Ronald Lewis, John Richardson, Barbara Steele. They don't give Richardson much dialogue. Or Steele - but there's no mistaking her look.; Lewis is quite amiable.
Kruger is fine, I guess, though his character is very lechy - he practically entraps Sylvia Syms. Maybe the film would've been better had it been about a female German student - Romy Schneider. Or maybe simply that he just needed a character to play. His German student is too affabble and well adjusted. If he came in as a cliche Tuetonic, no sense of humour, and learned how to soften... that's an arc. But he comes in amiable and goes that way.
The writers were Leslie Bricusse and Frederic Raphael, then collaborators.Location work helps and the colour photography is pleasing. It's amiable. I laughed at the moment where Kruger dresses as versions of the guys to go after their women and in one he acts like an angry young man and the girl gets turned on at him being "so angry". That was funny.
It's a curio. Amiable. Dim. Kruger plays cricket in one scene.
No comments:
Post a Comment