6/10
Takes A While To Find Its Timing
11 August 2023
Crown minister Leslie Phillips and back-bench friend Brian Rix are co-sponsoring an anti-smut bill. This has a group of youngster upset, so they kidnap Rix on the day he is to be wed, drug him, and call the papers and police to come visit the orgy and wreck his standing. Meanwhile, Phillips is supposed to be on his way to Scotland, but has arranged for a rendez-vous -- two, as it turns out. All these collide in one large flat into which youngsters, police, fiancees, secretaries, mistresses, and senile Opposition MP Derek Royle are crammed into various doors, closets, and under beds.

I imagine Michael Pertwee's script performed better as a door-slamming stage farce than the movie it was turned into. Valiant efforts to open it up via editing cuts only serve to destroy the sharp timing such efforts need. Still, the ladies, including Joan Sims, Joanna Lumley, Myra Frances, and Nicola Rowley, are lovely, and if you have patience, the second half is better timed for this sort of nonsense, and Rix is quite good, and Phillips (whom youngsters may recall as the voice of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter is always amusing in a fast-thinking, scoundrelly way.

The idea was sorted into a TV show, MEN OF AFFAIRS.
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