User reviews

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.

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.

I watched this film in its entirety on Youtube (May 2011) and am glad that I did. This film is a time capsule of the styles and faces of the mid-late 1960s and of 'groovy' London. The film offers a cornucopia of great faces of British comedy, all of which add to the mayhem of a loosely directed, pie-in-your-face slapstick comedy.

This film presents you with several extended pie-fight sequences, sixties songs (none of which are famous) and lots and lots of London scenery, the film being shot entirely on location. None of the cast are taking this film seriously and the result is actually quite funny, and adequately entertaining to hold attention for 100 minutes. Rather than feel dated this film is more of a time capsule of an era some 45 years old.

In short, the film is good humoured and worth seeking out. Play spot the actor and cringe at the naff songs which are interspersed throughout the movie. It's too much.

Shortly after seeing this film in 1991 I was offered my 'dream' job and found myself heading down from the north to live in London for the first time. Just like the two girls in this crazy movie.

I loved this when I first saw it. And when I watch it now, it also captures some of the excitement that I felt back in '91.

London is a magical place with a unique feel. I was on a 'high' for the first few months, with a tingle down my spine whenever I walked around famous places. Even now I can't walk down Carnaby Street without visualising Lynn Redgrave skipping down it in the fast-cut musical sequence in Smashing Time. Many of the songs are, to be honest, quite bad. But they are also rather catchy and so stick in the mind.

There are many satirical swipes at the culture of the time. The photographer (Michael York) is David Hemmings in Blow Up. Rita Tushingham is the model Twiggy and Lynn Redgrave is pop star Helen Shapiro. The TV show is Candid Camera.

The '60's slang is also set up. The girls search for a 'switched on' pad and Anna Quayle runs a shop called 'Too Much'. When Rita Tushingham asks if customers won't be put off by the name (in the sense that the goods are 'too' expensive) the true meaning of the phrase is explained to her. The goods are just 'too much' (ie. mind blowing).

John Clive is at his best as the rather camp and slightly Jewish owner of Sweeney Todd's pie restaurant. The pie fight itself is well executed with some neat comic touches, such as the 'queen' who shoots himself when his fashionable suit is hit by a flying pie.

Indeed, Smashing Time is something of a gay cult classic. Murray Melvin appears as a gay character (as he did a few years earlier in A Taste of Honey, again with Rita Tushingham).

Other familar faces of the period include Arthur Mullard, Irene Handl and Ian Carmichael and there are interesting glimpses of locations as they were 30 years ago -- including the railway station at St. Pancras.

This is definitely a film you will want to watch again and again. You'll never tire of the musical and comic set pieces.

Unfortunately it is very rarely shown on TV in Britain. I haven't seen it on terrestrial TV since 1991 and it is not currently available on either video or DVD in the UK.

G.

This is a silly film but enjoyable. No pretensions but nice to see London views of the 60's. Michael York's accent is surreal and Rita Tushingham is as enchanting as ever. Great to watch when you are in a good mood.

Two girls from up North (Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave) arrive in London looking for a town that swings and to make it, but instead find a craziness that they did not expect.

A swinging sixties zeitgeist film if there ever was one. It would probably have been better made or handled if directed by the likes of Michael Winner or Ken Russell with its sketchy old fashioned slapstick comedy skits that come in abundance that many of their films seem to contain. It's all a little too episodic, but the best thing about the film, other than the ever reliable and wonderful Rita Tushingham is the look and colour of the film and the London locations, even if it is a food fight in a good old fashioned worker's caff.

Rita Tushingham is head and shoulders above anything in this film and the film as a whole. Lynn Redgrave gives a decent performance but her role doesn't allow for anything much more than camp laughs.

These two are the stars and do keep you watching but as you watch you find yourself dropping to the films level and into its rhythm. Maybe, I wasn't into either its humour or pace because I was watching it for the first time over half a century after the audience it was made for. I have watched many films in the past from this era, 'Up The Junction' for example, that I enjoyed without seeming to have to adapt to the time and there's others so that it's age isn't an excuse. I just found that the humour was predictable and silly at first. However, as mentioned, as it went on I got quite engrossed and I can only put that down to the quality of the lead characters.

Not a film I would recommend but one I would be embarrassed to say I liked.

The credits for Smashing Time serve as fair warning for what is to follow. Ugly caricatures of the stars are show over an abysmal song sung badly by the movie's stars, Tushingham and Redgrave. It is painful.

It is also accurate. The movie itself has the stars playing broad, unlikable, and unfunny caricatures.

Billed as a satire, for the most part this is low comedy. This is a notably awful scene in a diner in which everyone is squirting every else with various substances. What it lacks in originality and humor it makes up through length; it goes on and on.

There are watchable moments - art robots on a rampage, the recording of a pop song - but even at its best it is uninspired. And it is rarely at its best.

look, if you are looking for deep meaning - or songs that make you want to sing along, then you're looking in the wrong place.

but if you want a kitschy look (i bet even at the time of release!) at the mid-sixties, then look no further! come on! lynn redgrave as a pop-starlet? rita tushingham as a supermodel?? michael york as a photog???? what could be better??? the scenes of lynn belting out her "hit" song are worthy of admission alone! i was also grateful for some of the shots of carnaby street in it's hayday - god, i just wish i were there! this is a movie that mike myers very obviously borrowed from to create austin powers. it has a lot of the same sensibilities.

see the original - maybe skim by most of the songs... but enjoy the ride!

I wanted to like this movie so much more. The episodic and cartoonish approach should work within the late 60s pop-art Mod London setting but too much slapstick (pie and spray paint fights) and a lagging pace keep this from being the true cult film it should have been. Tushingham (with her big bulging eyes) and Redgrave (who looks a bit like Jay Leno) are well cast and there are plenty of wild fashions on display but the film never really gains any momentum until the last 20 minutes or so. I also liked the bit where Redgrave records a typically mindless but catchy pop song. Fun to watch once but not something you'll revisit again and again. Try to see the widescreen DVD which really does justice to all the wild color schemes on display.

Lame almost to an Ed Wood level of lame. Incredibly, these same people (Lynne Redgrave, Tushingham, and director Desmond Davis) made a great movie called GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, but don't watch this one expecting anything like GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, THE KNACK, or GEORGY GIRL. Those are all great compared to this. It's like a long, slow episode of "Lavern and Shirley".

A movie not to be taken seriously, just to be enjoyed! It crosses the Swinging 60's with the Slapstick 30's and does rather well. (Try some liquid manure for a topping, you never know!) There's one funny, crazy, outrageous situation after another to get your attention and keep it.

While there's no way you can believe that two unknown young women take a trip to London (no, not an acid one) and overnight go from waitress to fashion model, to singer, to famed photographer's girlfriend, to whatever, and back again, you can just enjoy the performances of Lynn Redgrave, and Rita Tushingham, and thrown in Michael York for good measure, and just have fun!

Few people like British cinema of the 60s more than me, but even I couldn't last more than 30 minutes minutes into this tripe. What were they thinking?

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.

Really a dumb movie, slightly funny at times but very dated and painful to watch at other times. There were some genuinely smart and fun ideas (like the Yvonne hit single) but then it turns into a piefight. Ridiculous. Apparently the filmmakers must've been straight and sober filming one half and getting high filming the other half. Was hoping to see some of historical "Carnaby Street" on film, but it was just too silly. Also, what's up with Lynn Redgrave in that opening scene, she looks like she's a goddamn giant! Grade 6 out of 10. D-.

This is a typical product of the swinging sixties.All style little substance.Written by of all people George Melly.Everything is far over the top.Lynn Redgrave seems to babble and shout her lines making them hard to hear.There are some funny moments such as Peter Jones as the Candid Camera type host.However this is overwhelmed by the unfunny custard pie sketch.

This movie made me feel like I had swooshed back in time to swingin' London of the '60's, Austin Powers style. If you dig the scene, trip out and have a winner time. If you're gonna be square, rent "84 Charing Crossroads" and box your mind. This groove is for real with frosty tunes and wailin' laughs. Cheery-oh.

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.

The timid "Brenda" (Rita Tushingham) and her more brash mate "Yvonne" (Lynn Redgrave) arrive in London determined to make it big. Pretty quickly, though, they find themselves at odds with each other as success visits the latter whilst the former ends up working in a greasy spoon. Several food fights later, they realise that perhaps it's better to work together, but after some brief success fleecing the wealthy - like the posh "Mone-Rath" (Ian Carmichael) a real opportunity presents itself. "Yvonne" wins £10,000 on one of those "you have to laugh" television shows where they demolish your house as a surprise for you coming home from work, and then you're meant to giggle about it. She decides to invest the cash in a record deal, and with her pal in tow as her assistant, she finds herself with an hit on her hands and the talk of the town. It's this bit that rather livens the film up as it delivers an entertainingly savage swipe at the whole faux nature of show-business. The endless spongers and hangers-on, the executives - in this case the smarmy "Jeremy" (Jeremy Lloyd) - who are out for themselves, and the party-goers who live their lives for the moment. It all comes to an head in the revolving restaurant of London's Post Office tower where, yep, more food gets flung. Musical impresario George Melly was behind quite a lot of this, and you can appreciate his jazzy-style on the soundtrack as the story stays just about on the right side of farce. The two women work quite well together and though the script isn't much to write home about, the film works better than I was expecting as a piece of 1960s satire on the working class, sexuality, fashion, aspiration and the fickleness of the music business. There are some fun scenes around Carnaby Street too!

An attempt to to cash in on The Swinging Sixties. There were a number of films made of this ilk, trying to mix the sixties vibe with surrealism and slapstick humour, but this fails to deliver. It looks so dated and is just inexplicably poor.

A waste of the talents of Lynne Redgrave and Rita Tushingham.

This film is the personification of London in the swinging '60s.

Two clumsy girls come down from the North of England, in search of the 'Swinging London scene' they've read so much about in their teen mags.

After much tomfoolery, they 'make it'.

Yvonne played by Lynn Redgrave makes it as a pop star and her mousey friend, Brenda (Rita Tushingham) becomes a top model, adorning the covers of all the top glossy fashion magazines.

Unfortunately, it takes quite a while for things to happen, also, unfortunately, there are too many overly long, unfunny slapstick-pie- throwing scenes before the the action really takes off, but it's worth the wait.

From the moment Yvonne goes into the studio to cut her first hit single, the film starts to fly.

The clothes, the cars, the energy, the excitement of that fleeting moment when London was the coolest place on earth are captured here more than in any other film made at the time. Although the film set out to mock the era, almost unintentionally it caught Zeitgeist, unlike the many other films of the time, that tried so hard to capture what was going on and fell flat on their faces.

Smashing Time was supposed to have been made in 1966 at the height of the Swinging London madness, but it was delayed and delayed, it was finally released in early 1968, by which time people had become very jaded with the notion of 'the swinging city'. Things moved very fast back then. What was in in '66 was very old hat by '68 and the film flopped only to be rediscovered many years later. It now has quite a following and it warrants the retrospective love it gets.

A top notch DVD with tons of extras is long overdue, so the young generations of the past, present and future can have a good look at what '60s London was really like.

'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.