Redundant and unnecessary.

i must have seen a different film!!

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

In between "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help!", Richard Lester directed this look at swinging London. "The Knack ...and How to Get It" has the same sort of humor as Lester's collaborations with the Beatles (and even takes time to show the generation gap). Unfortunately, the depictions of gender relations are dated at best, and the last part of the movie turns rape into a joke. This will come across as especially inappropriate in an era when large numbers of women have exposed some notable men as sexual predators.Aside from that, the movie is enjoyable. A fair amount of zany stuff and rapid-fire dialogue make it something that you'll probably like watching, understanding that it's very much a product of its time.

'The knack (or how to get it)' makes a marvelous persiflage of the 19-Sixties and everything the era stands for.It's all there: the generation gap with the people over forty, the urge to live your life differently than your parents do, the idealization of sex, and the then revolutionary new forms of art.An extra dimension is added by the magnificent acting of Rita Tushingham, representing a sober & realistic look on life from the countryside.However, I estimate that knowledge about the 19-Sixties is necessary to enjoy 'the knack' to the full. For those who haven't, this film must be meaningless and even boring -- having faded away by the passing of time already a long time ago.

As the '60's progressed, a sea change took place in British film comedy. Norman Wisdom and St.Trinians were suddenly out-of-date ( though they kept on going for a few more years ), and a new wave of Britcoms appeared, among them 'The Knack'.Richard Lester had just made 'A Hard Days' Night' and brought the same mindset to this picture. Coming a year before Time magazine published its famous 'Swinging London' article, it depicts a Britain on the cusp of a cultural and ( more importantly ) sexual revolution. As Spike Millgan later put it: "Queen Victoria died in 1960!".It is arty ( shot in glorious black and white ), sexist, often irritating, yet manages in its own way to say something serious about human relationships.Michael Crawford stars as 'Colin', a shy, repressed schoolteacher brassed off because his boarder, the good-looking 'Tolen' ( Ray Brooks ) has a knack for 'pulling the birds'. Tolen is the Russell Brand of his day; girls are literally queueing outside his room at all times for sex. Tolen offers Colin a masterclass in the art of seduction.Tolen's attitude to the fairer sex is: "I see, I want and I take", the sort of chauvinistic attitude probably responsible for Women's Lib in the first place. But even his powers are about to be tested to the limit when along comes Nancy ( Rita Tushingham ) a Northern lass newly arrived in London in search of lodgings. Nancy is immune to Tolen's 'Mr.Tight Trousers' persona, and when he tries to get fresh with her she cries 'Rape!'.A number of reviewers have described the movie as 'dated'. They are absolutely right. But it is fascinating for that reason alone. It is now a quaint museum piece, the sexual attitudes and mores of the era are on view and are fascinating. It may surprise some to learn that the play on which the film is based was written by a woman - Ann Jellicoe.Lester took the play and opened it out ( with help from screenwriter Charles Wood ), turning it into a visual delight. Surrealism had finally joined the comedy mainstream. The jokes come at you so fast you need to be quick to pick them up. For instance, when Colin wonders whether to let his front room to a monk, we suddenly cut to a bus full of monks. When he gets angry and tries to keep Tolen out of the house by boarding up the front door, the film turns into a mini-lecture on carpentry.Throughout a Greek chorus of elderly people comment on events. "I know what she's looking for and its not the Y.W.C.A.!". Their remarks are much the same as you would hear nowadays. Being too old for sex themselves, they frown on the younger generation for being able to do it. Its these quirky flourishes that gives the film much of its charm. The famous scene where Colin, Nancy and Tom push a bed through the streets of London employs a style that was later used on 'The Monkees' and 'The Goodies'.The cast are excellent, in particular Donal Donnelly as an eccentric Irishman with a mad compulsion to paint everything white. Michael Crawford's 'Colin' has all the naivety of his later ( better known ) role of 'Frank Spencer'. Tushingham's innocent waif is appealing. As 'Tolen', all quiff and dark glasses, Ray Brooks is the epitome of '60's cool, a man who has women falling for him like dominoes. Watching this again recently, it occurred to me what a great vehicle for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore this would have made. The humour is broadly in line with what the duo were doing on 'Not Only But Also'. You can easily imagine Cook as 'Tolen' and Moore as 'Colin'. Perhaps these characters inspired the ones they later played in 'Bedazzled'. The film has its share of longueurs, however. Colin pretending to be a lion is something I think it could have done without. And Nancy's cries of 'Rape!' to passers-by have ensured it a high place on the 'it has not aged well' movie lists. 'Comedy has a new freedom' gushed Newsweek magazine at the time of its release. Absolutely. Rather than being brushed under the carpet, sex was now openly talked about on screen. There was to be no going back. Nudity and bad language would soon enter the equation.I must mention John Barry's marvellous score. He was on the top of his game here ( having just done 'Goldfinger' and 'Zulu' ) and the music perfectly accompanies the offbeat action. You will be humming that gorgeous title theme for days.If you want a British movie that has 'Sixties' written all over it, look no further. It also manages to be a life-affirming, witty and accomplished piece of work.

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.