WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HAROLD SMITH

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HAROLD SMITH

Directed by Peter Hewitt. Starring Tom Courtenay, Michael Legge, Laura Fraser, Lulu, David Thewlis

A PISS-POOR slice of low-rent northern-English comic whimsy, with misguided feelgood pretensions and the most horrific costume design this side of Velvet Goldmine, this painfully lame romantic comedy should be available on video in all good bargain-bins for 50p before the year's out. A potentially strong cast are hopelessly deployed in the service of a profoundly uninvolving narrative, and while the film's feelgood factor might just manage to infect those who haven't had to sit through every Full Monty rip-off of the last few years, it missed my funnybone entirely.

Directed by journeyman Peter Hewitt (Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey), the film's plot runs thus: disco-crazy kid Vince Smith (the irritating Legge) works as a junior accountant with a law firm, and is hopelessly infatuated with co-worker Joanna (Laura Fraser: fantastic eyes, inexplicable taste in scripts). Meanwhile, his home-life is more bizarre than most: his mild-mannered, anything-for-a-quiet-life dad Harold (Courtenay) is possessed of supernatural Uri Geller-style mind-over-matter powers, while his cheerfully slutty wife (eh, Lulu) is easy pickings for what seems to be every bloke in Sheffield, including Vince's tubby best pal.

Intrigued? No, thought not. Anyway, the quiet, unassuming Harold achieves overnight media notoriety after one of his ESP experiments goes horribly wrong and stops the pacemakers of three geriatrics, resulting in their deaths. Meanwhile, an extremely implausible will-they-won't-they romance between Legge and Fraser simmers under the surface, clumsily integrated with a 1977 punk-meets-disco scenario which sees the nerdish Vince adopt safety-pins and a Sid Vicious sneer in order to impress the doggy-collared object of his affections.

Cameos from the likes of Keith Chegwin, Alan Whicker, Angela Rippon, John Craven and other people you thought were dead merely add to the underwhelming daytime-TV feel of the whole thing, and the finale is positively excruciating: Legge dancing around Travolta-style in front of a disco/mating audience of hardcore punks, while Fraser swoons over him and the gang are inexplicably roused to a round of applause. Lightweight as the film obviously is, it still irritated the almighty fuck out of me, and the wardrobe department deserve to be shot.

Can we please have no ’70s-nostalgia movies ever again?