Cool and sophisticated Tolen (Ray Brooks) has a monopoly on womanizing - with a long list of conquests to prove it - while the naive and awkward Colin (Michael Crawford) desperately wants a piece of it...This is very strange. We start with a creepy womanizer and a man who looks up to him. This seems about right for the 1960s, and still comes off as sleazy without ever having any nudity. Well done, Richard Lester.But then it takes a turn where the creepy guy gets even creepier and is accused of rape. While his methods are very much putting people under duress, the film decides to make a joke of rape rather than take any of it seriously. I don't know how to feel about any of this. Is anyone in this film worth looking up to?

A young and sexually frustrated school teacher rents out a room in his old house to a hip drummer with a motorcycle who is an expert at seduction in the hope of learning how he does it. Crazy editing and a haphazard style make it a challenge for those of us brought up on westerns and film noirs. A youth movie for the 60's with Rita Tushingham who seemed to embody that period of youthful British cinema, with a decidedly British humor and a take on society and sex, all wrapped up in the anarchy of free form movie making. Similar in style to Lester's "Hard Day's Night" but without the Beatles to carry it, this film relies more on the patience of the viewer, as it has a nice little story within the chaos.

Dick Lester really owes his career to the Beatles. I can't think of a single thing he's done without them that has any lasting entertainment value; The Knack is another enterprise in that vein. Lester, a one-time director of TV commercials, uses about the same technique in his features, a lot of trick camera work, blitzkrieg editing, curt, rapid-fire "dialogue" which is just a lot of clipped phrases passed off as conversation. The net effect is the same in both cases, Lester is trying to sell us the images- the plot, characters, etc. are all subservient to the next image or phrase Lester wants to run up the flagpole, ultimately each shot, each composition, each gesture, each catchphrase, has a sly life unto itself, and, when slapped together, really doesn't add up to much. The alleged plot of this sorry thing is an awkward schoolteacher/landlord (Michael Crawford) trying to learn how to score with women from his worldly tenant (Ray Brooks). This plot never gets off the ground in any way, it just degenerates into a lot of funky, dyspeptic action and unfunny (and often unintelligible) dialogue. There is not one bit of business in the movie that could be construed as funny, nor a single line of dialogue. And it didn't surprise me to note that the screenplay was written by Charles Wood, who was responsible for the pathetic screenplay for The Beatles "Help!" Wood seems eternally to be marketing his work for The Beatles. It's certainly no accident that Rita Tushingham is cast in the picture as a dead ringer for Ringo Starr. When one sees Crawford, Brooks, Tushingham, and Donal Donnelly in the same shot, we are watching a Beatles' sketch, and it doesn't say much for the material when one suspects that it would play far better for them than it does for these professionally trained actors. The performances are negligible at best, hysteria-ridden and squeamish at worst. People who compare this movie with "A Hard Day's Night" simply don't have a clue. HDN was intelligently written, with great characterization, and some memorable lines. Lester's so-called style was incidental to the proceedings. There is no joy in The Knack. No mirth, no verve. It is all technique. Dick Lester wants to bombard us with technique, miles and miles of it, until we are knocked flat by his sheer brilliance and wizardry. Unfortunately, clever technique does not a motion picture make. This movie plays like a ketchup commercial that won't end. It's not even silliness, it's an advertisement for silliness. That's how far removed Lester is to giving the audience anything resembling content. Complete and worthless garbage. 1/2 * out of 4

The Knack emerges as a serious contender as the film which best defines and captures the essence of the sixties. As a product of its age, it convincingly portrays an image of 'swinging London' that so dominated the media at that time. It is an enduring image, which has long since seeped into our collective consciousness.Today, The Knack appears, at best, to be an attempt at understanding the changing moral landscape that was being radically redrawn during this era. As a piece of contemporary film making, it manages to capture the spirit of that age perfectly. What it doesn't necessarily do is make sense of it all. The 1960s was, after all, a period of rapid social and political change - an age of cold war tension, supersonic invention and lunar landing pretensions, combined with increasing freedom for teenagers, both in terms of sex and spending power.The quartet of principal actors, Crawford, Tushingham, Brooks & Donnelly all give bravura performances. Richard Lester's direction was exemplary; indeed, he has probably not made a better film since those heady days. The locations, featuring some rather dingy-looking parts of the capital, look all the more so thanks to the decision to film in monochrome. This was particular brave considering the colourful times the film was depicting. The one ingredient which most of all created the sense of playfulness indicative of the film was John Barry's wonderfully mischievous jazz-tinged pop score. One cannot imagine the film without it, which is the highest compliment one can pay to a film soundtrack.There is no doubt that The Knack was and remains a stylish movie, albeit rooted in its time. No viewer can fail to date its origin correctly ... yet that's precisely what makes this celluloid time-capsule such a fascinating viewing experience. It exists as the archetypal mid-sixties art-house movie, which, like the decade in which it was written, took risks, dared to be different, and, if it didn't always succeed, sure as hell made an impression.