Director: Peter Hewitt
Cast: Tom Courtenay, Michael Legge, Laura Fraser, Stephen Fry, Charlotte Roberts, Amanda Root, Lulu, David Thewlis, Matthew Rhys
Distributor: UIP
Opening date: March the 10th
The Official "Harold Smith" Website
Harold Smith advert from Empire Magazine April 2000
Film Review: Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?
David Behrens
Such has been the popularity of those male strippers from Sheffield that now, every new British comedy vies to be the next Full Monty.
Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?, as premiered in Bradford last weekend, is no exception. Like Monty, it was shot in Sheffield. And like Monty, it's riotously funny.
But there the similarity ends. Tom Courtenay's longed-for return to the big screen is neither as broad, nor as realistic as its predecessor. We're in fantasy land here.
The story is set in 1977 and recalled from the present by Vince Smith (Michael Legge), the son of the title character. Vince was in his late teens back then. He was so wet behind the ears he needed guttering.
It was the era of disco, and the film's opening sequence, in a nod to Saturday Night Fever, has him boogying through the back-to-backs, best Burton's flares skirting the cobbles.
Vince's family is not so much dysfunctional as non-functional. Brother Ray (Matthew Rhys) fancies himself as a society magician but has too little up his sleeve. His drainpipe-climbing mum (played by Lulu) meanwhile, gets in and out of other men's bedrooms like a fishnetted SAS.
And then there's dad. Harold Smith (Courtenay) has let life wash over him for so long that he now doesn't even realise he's wet. His values in life are his pipe and his TV set.
But Harold does have a gift. He's known it since childhood, but repressed it until now. He can perform miracles.
We learn this at Mrs Battersby's 100th birthday celebration at the local old people's home (as such institutions were called in the Seventies). The vicar arranges a concert ("You've been a lovely audience, I've been the Reverend Anthony Cooper") and Harold attempts a magic act. He tries to stop the audience's watches, like Uri Geller did on TV; instead, he stops their pacemakers and three of them drop dead.
Enter university lecturer Peter Robinson (Stephen Fry), assigned by Harold's solicitor to determine the truth about his powers. Robinson is under 50, yet wears a cardigan that zips up the front. He's a man whose face wants a good slapping - but no-one can find it beneath his beard.
Robinson hails Harold the new Messiah, and a media circus ensues, conducted by a heavily-disguised Mark Williams from The Fast Show as a Parkinson-like chat show host.
Meanwhile, young Vince has fallen for Robinson's daughter Joanna (Laura Fraser) but she, in an effort to rebel (and who wouldn't?) from the shaggy Seventies carpeting her dad keeps on his floor and his face, has become a night-time punk rocker. Vince follows suit, and swaps his John Colliers for a studded dog collar from the local pet shop.
And here lies the film's one big flaw: it can never quite decide which is its central character -Vince or Harold. It's also confused and a touch anti-climactic in its conclusion; nothing like the triumphalism of Monty, even though I gather that was what was intended. What it does have, however, is a couple of remarkable performances. Courtenay, whose face was once an icon for angry young men everywhere, now finds middle-age as comfortable as an old, sagging sofa. "You might spend the rest of your life in a prison cell," warns his solicitor after the pensioners' party. "Oh, will there be a television?" he wonders.
The other revelation is David Thewlis as the solicitor. An actor of mind-boggling versatility, he brings to the pin-striped, kipper-tied Mr Nesbitt such a ring of northern authenticity that I was put in mind of several real solicitors. "Three murders and the finger of suspicion pointed at you. What's it all about?"
What it is all about you may still be wondering on your way out of the cinema. But it's not many films that can make you laugh aloud, so let's enjoy Harold while we can. The litmus test of the Bradford premiere indicated that the public intends to do exactly that.
