Body and Soul isn't the great fight movie  the first half of the movie is often too conventional and formulaic for that  but it's certainly a contender even if it loses the title to The Set-Up. It's certainly one of John Garfield's best roles, finally getting into the ring: the play Golden Boy had been written for him only for the producers to cast him in a supporting role instead, so there's an element of unfinished business here, though Abraham Polonsky's script is much better that Odets' rather patronising fairytale. Where Odets dealt in stereotypes, Polonsky and everyone else on the film treat the supporting characters with dignity and respect: at a time when Stepinfetchit was the image of big screen black America, Canada Lee's performance as the former champ is a revelation  he may not have much screen time, but he's one of the most clued-in characters in the piece, with a dignity and intelligence all but unheard of for a black character in the 40s.

Despite the odd line like "If you wanna fight, fight for something, not for money," it's not an overtly political film, though that didn't stop it being used as evidence of communist subversion in the McCarthy era: few films can have had so many of its cast and crew blacklisted. Indeed, the HUAC must have used the credits as a wishlist  Polonsky, Garfield, Ann Revere, Lloyd Gough, Canada Lee, Art Smith, Shimen Ruskin, producer Bob Roberts and even, albeit to a lesser extent, cinematographer James Wong Howe (who had originally wanted to be a prizefighter and famously shot the bouts on rollerskates to get a more fluid sense of motion) all found themselves either blacklisted or greylisted, while director Robert Rossen only avoided that fate by naming names. Some weren't even communists (although most were members of minority groups). It's actually horrifying to consider just how many people involved in the film, from top to bottom, had their careers ruined or even, in the case of Garfield and Lee, were driven to an early death. In retrospect, the famed great almost-last line "What ya gonna do, kill me? Everybody dies." takes on a particularly bitter resonance.

{Aside from several future blacklist victims, it also boasts three future directors among its credits (Robert Aldrich, Robert Parrish and Nathan Juran) as well as montages from a fourth, Gunther Von Fritsch, whose directorial career never recovered from being fired from Curse of the Cat People.}


A boxer fights his way to the top while dealing with corruption. Garfield has perhaps the best role of his career, as he marvelously conveys the toughness, confidence, and compassion of his character. Palmer is equally good as his girlfriend, a practical woman who stands by her man. Revere made a career out of playing understanding mothers, and here she is Garfield's mother. In a sad coincidence, Lee, who plays a rival boxer, had an untimely death of a heart attack in May 1952, two weeks before Garfield died young of a heart attack. Rossen does a good job of creating a gritty, film noir atmosphere in what is generally regarded as one of the best boxing films.


"Body and Soul" released by United Artists in 1947, was apparently made after actor John Garfield got out of his Warner Brothers contract. He had made many films with them, but wanted to be more independent. In this film, Garfield plays Charley Davis, a lower middle class New Yorker with a talent for boxing. Not unlike many boxers, certainly of that time period, using your fists for sport was a way out of your meager background. While I have never been a big fan of John Garfield and did not consider him a top notch actor of the golden age of Hollywood, this part does seem made for him. Garfield is quite good here, playing the conflicted Charley with skill and credibility. There are actually few real boxing scenes in the film, except for the end, and that is why labeling this as a 'boxing movie' seems a bit deceptive. There are capable supporting players, including the lovely Lili Palmer, who loves Charley. Robert Conrad and Lloyd Gough ably play the tough guy thugs who want Charley to sell his soul for money. A notable performance by African-American actor Canada Lee is striking - considering this is 1947 and is treated as an equal by the white actors. Garfield was known for his politically liberal views, and perhaps this is why he later ended up as an enemy of the Communist witch hunters in Washington. Garfield's untimely death at age 39 was a shock to many - his funeral was mobbed by thousands. Perhaps this elevated his image above the work he left behind in film - but still, this film and a handful of others are quite good.


There are fight movies - and then there are movies that fight back...

I'd seen Golden Boy (1939), The Setup (1949), Champion (1949), The Harder They Fall (1956), and much later, Rocky (1976), followed by Raging Bull (1980)  and all of them only a few years after each was released (except Golden Boy). Somehow, however, I'd missed Body and Soul all these years. I missed it so many times on TV I lost count...

Well, now that I caught it on late night TV, finally, I can say unequivocally I liked all the above better, except for Golden Boy and Rocky.

The story and film, however, are still top notch and stand the test of time, in my opinion. Not because it's a good movie about the fight business  which it is  but because it is, of them all, the only one that uses the story as a blatant metaphor for the sham of the American Dream (although Bogie's effort in The Harder They Fall touches upon that idea).

The story is straight-forward: Garfield does Garfield playing Davis, the amateur boxer who gains the eye of a professional coach, Quinn (William Conrad) who gradually brings his protégé along to the professional circuit and thence under the influence of those who control the business, notably the sleazy Roberts (Lloyd Goff). Thereafter, Davis is but a mere puppet for the Mob: doing his thing in the ring and making only 50% for his efforts.

Naturally, Davis's girl, Peg (Lili Palmer), his buddy, Shorty (Joseph Pevney), his mother Anna (Anne Revere) and others all try to dissuade Davis from staying in the business which is rotten to the core, as everyone knows. But he makes it to the top: Champion of the World! And, he's got all the trappings of success: fast cars, fast women, fast booze, fast times  the sweet life, or so he thinks. So why give up what he's worked so hard to achieve? As Davis moans to Peg, who's urging him to retire, "But I'm the Champ!". And Peg replies, "No, Roberts is the Champ..." She could have said, "No, you're the Chump!" but that might have been a bit too much self-reflective angst for audiences of that day...

Nevertheless, throughout the story, Davis is made to look like a prize chump as he keeps ignoring how he's being treated by the Roberts of the world, all of who are bleeding him white (no pun intended)  and, in the finale, to the point of forcing Davis to take a dive in his last bout and retire rich. Does he do it or does he redeem his honor? I'll let you see the movie...

Garfield does a solid job in the role of Davis, but I was more impressed with Pevney's role as Shorty: as Davis's alter ego, he does an admirable turn without being maudlin or sanctimonious. The direction from Robert Rossen and filming from James Wong Howe are very good, as is the editing from Robert Parrish, as you would expect anyway.

I'm glad I got around to this one, as I do recommend it. But, I still prefer Champion as my all time favorite.


This film is another dark, gloomy boxing story that's populated with unsavory characters, crooked managers and losers. John Garfield is just right as the tough, gritty boxer who wants a better life for his proud but needy mother and his fiancé whom he seems to take for granted. Garfield is also insecure and needs the approval of his rigid, unyielding mother who disapproves of his career choice and would prefer to see her son become a success in another profession. Domestic strife seems to be a way of life for the unhappy boxer who finds self-worth and expression in only the ring. Another plot angle details tension between Garfield and his mother over his girlfriend who doesn't meet the demanding mother's high standards. The scenes of Garfield and Canada Lee in the ring are very realistic and brutal.


Superb boxing film--the only one to come close is "Raging Bull". John Garfield (in an excellent performance) plays a poor young man who quickly becomes a world class champ only to find corruption at the top. Film is well-directed by Robert Rossen and contains exquisite cinematography by James Wong Howe. All the acting is good except for Lilli Palmer. She tries, but she seems totally lost in her role. It moves quickly, is never boring and has some very brutal (for 1947) fight scenes. Only main complaint I have is about the ending--MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD. He's supposed to throw a fight, but at the end doesn't and gets out of boxing alive. In real life he probably would have been gunned down. But there was a Production Code to follow in 1947, so it had to have happy ending. Aside from that, it's a great film all around. Don't miss this one!


This movie is a great example of a movie that was done so well that it holds up even after over 50 years. I only became aware of it when I checked into imdb to see the reviews for the recent remake and was directed to check out the original which was at the library. This movie captured the essence of the fight world, the acting was great and the ending suspenseful


Let me first say, I did not select this film to watch, but it was scheduled on TCM at our movie watching time and my wife and I agreed, what the heck, lets watch John Garfield whom we had not seen in quite a while. I was riveted from the first scene to the last! A superb job of not only acting - Garfield, Palmer, Brooks, Revere, Conrad, et al - but a superb job of directing and editing! A magnificent movie, above all other so called boxing movies, including Rocky, etc. I felt every anxiety and every pain of Charlie Davis, Mr. Garfield's character. Thank you Hollywood for a rare joy! Some critics say the movie should not have had a happy ending. Bull! The best movies ever made have happy endings!


Why anyone would pay good money to watch a boxing movie is beyond me. Why anyone would pay money to watch any sports movie is also beyond me. Sports movies, especially boxing movies, have very little to say beyond, "Look how much punishment I can take and look how big a dope I am for even stepping in the ring!" "Body and Soul" has all the common clichés that one would expect from a rope-a-dope film: 1) the boxer with a low I.Q; 2) the disapproving mother; 3) the smart girlfriend that likes the boxer for God-knows-whatever reasons; 4) the crooked boxing promoter; 5) the death of a fighter that should know better; 6) athletes knowingly submitting to a crooked system; 7) managers manipulating fighters for their own benefit. This movie tries to tackle too much territory. If you watch it, prepare for you brain to take a "slugging" and come away from it punch drunk.


Every one of John Garfield's (Charlie Davis),"He Ran all the Way",'51, films was outstanding and in this picture he did a fantastic job as a boxer struggling to make a living in very poor surroundings in New York City along with his mother, Anne Revere(Anna Davis),"Birch Interval",'77,who tired to go on welfare but her son Charlie would not hear of it and decided to reach to the top of the boxing field. His girlfriend, Lilli Palmer,(Peg Born),"The Other Side of the Wind",'72, played a great supporting role. However, Lilli Palmer was not exactly the greatest person to play this character. Greatly admired John Garfield and all his films, unfortunately he died making love and his career came to a sudden END!


Body and Soul is a satisfying, hard-edged movie about boxing from the late forties, and was written by Abe Polonsky, and directed by Robert Rossen. This time it's John Garfield who's the poor kid who puts on the gloves. The story is melodramatic, and as with most movies about the fight game, it's presented as a metaphor of American life and the American Dream. Well! Some of us might feel differently. The acting, by Garfield especially, is first rate, and the mood convincingly downbeat, at times depressing. As a bridge between the social consciousness films of Warner Brothers (who did not produce this one) and live television, the picture is fascinating, and one can see the liberal humanism of TV writers like Rod Serling aborning. The Philco and Alcoa shows were right around the corner.


Like the man said if you're gonna steal steal from the best and Abraham Polonsky surely took this to heart when he lifted Golden Boy right out of Cliff Odets' typewriter and added just enough spin to get away with it. What is all the more remarkable are the blatant 'clues'. Garfield, a fellow alumnus with Odets of the Group Theatre actually had a minor role in the original production of Golden Boy - a plot, lest we forget, involving a gifted violinist who takes up prizefighting - more than this Garfield's previous movie role was Humoresque in which he played - yeah, you got it - a gifted violinist corrupted by money. Unlike Joe Bonaparte, Garfield's Charlie Davis is not in conflict with his artistic gifts (he has none) but is hooked on money and all it can buy or, if you want to get fancy, he is fighting his better nature as well as his opponents in the ring. Just because it owes so much to Odets doesn't make it a bad movie but Odets is there in every frame because Polonsky has opted to write about a world familiar to Odets and employs sub-Odets dialogue. In a strong supporting cast, Lloyd Gough, William Conrad, Lilli Palmer, Joseph Pevney and the great Ann Revere only lightweight Hazel Scott is superfluous. By now, of course, Garfield could play characters like this in his sleep but nevertheless this is a fine example of late forties film-making.


this, is NOT one of those films it is one of the biggest pieces of tripe I have ever scene, the camera work is trying to be flashy but it really just crap the whole thing looks like the red shoe diaries, but without the sex, the only reason I bought this was I wanted to try out dvd and this was the cheapest one I could find, possibly the worst buy of my life and could have put you off dvd forever, the soundtrack is REALLY tacky and most of the movie is made up of endless repeats of clips from the first two films, why anyone would want to make a movie as awful as this is beyond me, if they had really attempted to make an original movie and failed I would be nicer in this review but they don't they just got the rights to reproduce stuff from the first two and then edit it and repeat it into this film with about maybe under 1 3rd original footage which is about up to the standards of film school students, DO NOT buy this movie. the only entertainment this dvd can offer is if you were to stick it in the microwave and watch the flashing lights! UTTER UTTER UTTER UTTTER unbelievable GARBAGE! 0/10 if only the voting system would allow that.


I won't waste a whole lot of time of this one because as far as I'm concerned it isn't really a movie to start with, just a careless mish-mash of borrowed footage and embarrassingly amateurish new footage made solely for the purpose of pasting the whole mess together and call it a "Boogeyman" sequel. Literally 80% of this film is stolen from its far superior predecessor "The Boogeyman", a film that the writers of this garbage apparently didn't even bother to watch because they couldn't even get actress Suzanna Love's original character's name (Lacy) right. And to add insult to injury the killer is invisible in the original footage and visible in the new footage, apparently they think their audience is as stupid as they are. 0 out of 10 and I wish IMDb's rating system went that low, the most callous and blatant attempt to rip off people's money I've even seen, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!


The original Boogeyman was a silly but entertaining supernatural slasher flick. It was by no means a great film but fun in the right frame of mind. The third instalment in this series, Return of the Boogeyman, on the other hand, is simply atrocious. It consists of two things. Firstly, cheap and lifeless new footage. Secondly, LOADS of recycled bits from the first movie. The new material is unbelievably amateurish but not in an amusingly inept way, simply incredibly tedious. This footage has clearly been knocked together quickly and without any effort. It serves as a framing device for the endless clips from the first (and possibly second) movies. And boy, do they milk those clips from the earlier films; sometimes reusing sequences over and over again. The only new addition to these parts is a voice over that pointlessly describes exactly what we can see with our own eyes. The whole experience of watching this is truly mind-numbing.

Return of the Boogeyman is an example of the very worst kind of exploitation flick; the kind that exploits the audience in a highly cynical way. I want to keep this review brief and to the point because this film deserves no more. There is nothing here of value at all. This is worthless.


in fact,it's basically the same movie.and they couldn't even get the time line of events correct.maybe that was intentional due to laziness or not caring.either way,this thing is a real woofer.it doesn't even deserved to be called a movie.i viewed this as a so called second feature on the disc containing the original The Boogeyman.i thought my head would explode,and i urge you to run as far in the opposite direction of this thing,if you should be cursed with the misfortune of combing across it's path.it should come with a warning label like:Warning-may cause your i.q to drop several points if you are within it's vicinity.for me,there's no doubt this thing is a 0/10


Let me just say I loved the original Boogeyman. Sure, it's a flawed clichéd 80s horror movie, but hey those types are fun to watch! And plus it gave us something a bit different. So I gladly bought it and to my surprise this movie came along with it (only copy they had actually) so I thought "Eh, what the hell" and bought it. Mistake #1. So that night I felt in the mood to watch a movie (I actually bought tons that day) and figured this was the shortest out of all the ones I bought so I'll just watch this and hit the sack. Mistake #2. Yes, I have heard how bad it was but I was willing to take a chance.

So a few minutes into the movie and there's the first flashback. I think nothing of it at first. Then the new footage with the prediction of the chick in the bathtub and I'm kinda liking the direction it's going in. Then the next flashback which is a bit longer and I'm sitting there thinking "Yes I've seen the first Boogeyman! I know what happens so move along!" Then the next one comes up and I figure screw it and fast forward through it. Then the final one (Maybe I fast forwarded through the explanation but why was she lying topless on the mirror? At least she could've shown them!) and I decide to fast forward through it and then the climax and the movie was over! WTF? What happened to the prediction stuff? What happened to the long hair dude (Did he tap that or what?)? And more importantly what kind of weed was the writer and director smoking when making this awful POS??!!! And what was the point? Was Annie just having flashbacks of what happened in the first movie? Or was the stuff from the first movie just happening at the same time as this? The latter could make sense because the stabbing of Pantyhose Face happened in 1978 according to the characters in this movie and it was 15 years later. Wait a minute, no it wouldn't! Because Lacey (who the movie questionably renamed Nancy! Is Uli too dumb to remember his movie characters' names?) would be 20 years old since she was 5 when that happened and not only is she married to someone who looks 30ish but also has a kid who looks around 7 and 10! Did she get around during middle school? And also why would Pantyhose be after Annie? What connection does she even have with the characters of the original movie? And a BIG HUGE MOVIE MISTAKE I found in this movie is that when the doctor is writing in his notebook does anyone notice that he's just SCRIBBLING? Wow, how professional, Doc! So, what is the explanation for all of the questions I asked above? IT'S A POINTLESS MOVIE WITH NO THOUGHT PUT INTO IT AT ALL! I will try to find a copy of the original movie that comes with just that movie and that's it (Maybe a couple of extra features, any Special Edition of it yet?). Then I will return this DVD and hopefully this review and all the others will prevent those who haven't seen it from seeing it thus making movie stores get rid of it and this movie may not exist anymore! Please let that be so! Sorry this review is so long. I'm just angry at this movie I had to vent somehow


The ENTIRE MOVIE is flashbacks from the first Boogeyman movie as well as, inexplicably, footage from another Uli Lommel / Suzanna Love film Brainwaves. It is framed with some more current (from the early 90's anyway) footage that is boring, poorly acted and cheaply shot. Not only is the film almost completely flashbacks, they REPEAT the same flashbacks throughout the film. So you see the recycled footage over and over again, as if you hadn't seen it already. As if the originals weren't bad enough. I've never seen a movie so padded.... Someone was milking the last dollar out of these films. Total ripoff. And talk about padding... why do I have to write 10 lines about this trash? If I can convey that it's garbage in 2 lines, that should be enough.


I can't believe this film was allowed to be made. These people should be drug out and beat with blunt objects. They should be tortured. This film is an abomination.It's nothing but footage from the first film. Whatever is original is freaky and makes no sense whatsoever. It's like some sort of drug hallucination.Like, what's with the laying on a mirror naked therapy. Also, whatever moron patched together this turd didn't even bother to watch the first film, because they kept calling Suzanna Love's character Natalie, when it's Lacey. I felt like shouting that at the screen, "IT'S LACEY, IT'S LACEY!!!!". I give it a -50 out of 10. MY GOD!!!!


Mathew McConaughey can act, but not in this. Kate Hudson can act , but not in this. This is not a "chick flic";no woman I know would knowingly sit through this forced, unfunny film much less force her boyfriend to do so. A genuine stinker!


the makers of this movie failed to realize a very important element of romantic comedies. the audience has to WANT the two main characters to fall for each other. there wasn't one point in the movie where we wanted andie and ben to actually 'come to their senses' as we're supposed to always do in movies of this type. both are extremely self-involved and don't know anything about caring for another human being. of course in a good movie this leaves plenty of room for heroic changes, but they never made any (at least not before the audience stopped caring). i never got the feeling that ben would sacrifice his really stupid ad pitch (frost yourself?!) or that andie would quit her job or even the story because of how she feels (even though she hated it anyway).

i thought a more interesting love story was the one about andie's co-worker who starts the whole thing off. a movie about a girl who really loves a guy, but does all the wrong things on ACCIDENT would actually be more funny and more touching to watch. i really loved when the boyfriend comes back to her and says his pillow doesn't smell like the perfume she sprayed on it anymore. obviously he HATED when she did it originally, but because she was genuine he wound up missing her. that actress reminds me of someone too-- mary lou retton or something.

anyway, i may be a guy, but i can really love a good romantic comedy. this movie wasn't romantic or funny. people who love romantic comedies should hate this one. if they actually fall for this one, we're gonna get a lot more lame ones down the road.


A very funny story of a reporter for a fashion magazine who is about to write a column about all the wrongs a woman can do in an early relasionship.The reporter has to selct a man who she shall date and make all the things a man hate women to do, like calling his mother, destroying guys night and so on. She is supposed to have him leave her in 10 days. The man she chooses is a PR-man that has agreed to a bet to have a woman fall in love with him in 10 days. It´s easy to find yourself in the story, amongst all the errors and all the forgiving that takes part between them. I recommend the movie to both women and men but not at the same time.


This is kinda an extended version of Sex & The city. You know exactly wat is going to happen. But the chemistry between Kate and Mathew is good. Finaly a differend couple then Hanks and Ryan. Although we see them both in this movie.

7/10


my girlfriend and I loved it. we found it very funny. my girlfriend and I were able to relate with a lot of the situations. there were moments when I was doubling over in my seat laughing.

Kate Hudson is great, aside from being really pretty. :) she has a good knack for comedy. all throughout the movie we saw shades of her mom's (Goldie Hawn) style, but with enough touches of her own to make her own style distinct.

of course, the movie is predictable, particularly the ending, which I felt needed a little more polish. but all in all, it was very enjoyable.


I didn't expect much from this film. Romantic comedies, if you see 1, you've seen them all, but with this one it's a little different. Ok, you know how the film will end, from the beginning, but somehow, on the way, the film surprised me. For me it's one of the best in this genre!


I wont write a lot about this movie since its a comedy except to say that probably most original(well not original but perfectly acted with great chemistry between actors) since meet my parents, most comedies have been pretty stupid.

You have your usual humor with dumb blonde jokes, falls, slips etc. This movie happens to be very romantic as well as extremely hilarious as the 2 main actors match perfectly well with each other. Even the cuddle/kiss scenes aren't overly pushing but slowly developed to let the viewer actually keep like they are really passionate about each other but don't have to display it to everyone.

Now the funny things weren't the jokes the developed over the movie, but they were the small reactions that character goes through against other actions.

As kate's character tries makes him leave her, most men can put themselves in his shoes and totally go nuts over this, however for him with big plans on the line, he has to take it all in, but can he?

Cheers!


I enjoyed this "How to..."romantic/comedy, the chemistry between Kate and Matthew was electric. They both have good comedic timing. The challenges between this couple made for funny entertainment that help carry you away from life's hardships. A must see.


HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS - Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey (PG-13) "How to lose..." is a story about a how to journalist (Hudson) who plans a story on how to blah blah blah. McConaughey soon becomes her little experiment, but little does she know that he has a bet to make her fall in love with him in 10 days. In the end, of course, they end up falling in love.

 This movie was so painfully boring that I wanted to slam my head in the seat in front of me! The only thing that saved this film from being a complete catostrophe is Kate Hudson. She once again proves that she is great actress. Too bad McConaughey screws up the film for her. All I have to say is this movie was horrible. Save your self some money and time and just rent it when it come out on dvd! ** out of ***** (2 stars for Hudson's acting)


My girlfriend dragged me to this movie because it was her turn to pick. I was definitely not looking forward to going to a chick flick. But to my surprise it was a pretty hilarious movie. I wouldn't say though that the acting was superb, but it was descent. I'm not used to seeing Mathew McMonaughey in a romantic comedy. The last movie I saw with him in it was `A Time to Kill'. And in that movie he was co starring beside Samuel L. Jackson, who hasn't been in too many chick flicks if you know what I'm saying. I was surprised in what a good job he did in this romantic comedy, he held his own nicely beside Kate Hudson who is an excellent actor who can obviously play many different roles (Almost Famous). I'm glad they made this movie more into a comedy than into a sappy chick flick, I know I would have fallen asleep in the theater if it was unbearably sappy. I thought the movie had many comedic parts and which had girlfriend and I laughing hysterically in our seats. All in all, it was a good pick by my significant other and I gave the movie a 7/10. That's a good rating in my books, considering it was a romantic comedy.


Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey both give us a solid performance in this comedy/romance movie. This is probably best viewed with a date, rather than with just the guys. It's not too high on the chick flick scale, yet it's still high enough to be watched with that special someone. Good acting by the two main leads, McConaughey and Hudson make this film enjoyable and a must see. It's also very funny at times.

My rating: 8/10


 For the most part this movie was fairly funny and entertaining. The two leads do a credible job of playing their roles, and some of the things she does to drive him away are quite amusing.

 However, a lot of this movie just doesn't make sense. And not in a slight non-sequitur that movies often have swept under the rug. No, I'm talking big-time here. This supposedly smart, worldly columnist for a Cosmo-clone tries to drive this guy away by being wildly psychotic and bizarre, not what would actually make sense: unattractive and needy. And then when psycho and bizarre doesn't work, she ends up going to meet his folks on Staten island. And suddenly the script writers seem to give up on trying to decide what she should be thinking and she just goes as herself, with no anxieties or anything. Nor does he seem to notice this difference.

 Actually the whole Staten island sequence was excellent: funny, real, sweet, sincere... it just totally didn't fit the rest of the movie. It's as if the writers came up with that really great scene and then tried to find a totally bland hollywood movie to stick it in, where it vaguely makes sense.

 It's hard not to let this bother you. It reminds me of bad sitcoms where things are too zany for anyone to just continue on trying to be normal, and yet they do.


How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days was the perfect Valentine's Day flick to check out. It was better than your average chick flick and topped common titles: Sweet Home Alabama and Maid in Manhattan. How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days was more of a comedy than a romance. It lacked the "mushy-wushy" and was funnier than I imagined it would be. I was laughing out loud during some lines in the theatre and Kate Hudson performed remarkably. Matthew McConnaghey also did well and was just as excellent in The Wedding Planner (with Jennifer Lopez). Therefore, How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days isn't just another chick flick.


This was a decent enough romantic comedy for the most part. Kate Hudson's performance at times conjured images in my head of Jan Brady, and I found that particularly amusing. However, the ending was a train wreck. I would have expected the female protagonist, a professional journalist, to realize the irony of her situation and react more maturely. I suppose that such an ending wouldn't have been exciting enough, so they went with an overblown Hollywood-style ending complete with a decidedly odd public confrontation.


Ron Slinker, wherever you are, whatever you are doing right now, you are my new action adventure movie hero. This movie is one of the most amazingly endearing and delightfully stupid exercises in brain dead cult mayhem ever created and sooo badly deserves a chance to see light of day on a DVD re-issue. If only for the sheer number of people who would potentially be offended by it's gleeful, off the wall willingness to go beyond the constraints of good taste and show us things that will boggle the mind.

What is even more mind boggling is the array of talent behind the production: POINT BLANK's Lloyd Bochner returns as another suave, scuzzy mob boss; THE DIRTY DOZEN's Richard Jaeckel is well-cast as a police detective with a pre-LETHAL WEAPON juggernaut of destruction as a partner; B-movie legend John Agar is almost unrecognizable as the corrupt police captain who tries to undermine their investigation into a slough of mysterious heroin related deaths; writer Jack Cowden was one of the creators of the long-running TV show "Flipper"; and director Ricou Browning was not only the former swimming star inside the rubber suit of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON & it's sequels, but was the Director of Underwater Photography & Effects from the James Bond thrillers THUNDERBALL and it's unofficial remake, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, as well as similar work on "Flipper", "Sea Hunt", and the bizarre cult item SUB-A-DUB-DUB.

But the real talent on display in this film is Ron Slinker's "Mr. No Legs", a mob enforcer who's confinement to a wheelchair is no obstacle to his ambition to rule the smack trade in whatever port town this movie was filmed in. By the tacky polyester lounge suits, side-burned hair cuts and bell bottomed pants my guess on the year of production is 1978, and I can almost see the look of bewilderment that must have crossed the faces of the distribution execs who were shown the final product, which then lingered on the shelf until 1981 for whatever reason. Put it this way: The film is un-releasable by today's standards. It is racially insensitive, dares to have fun with the idea of a mob hit-man who is a paraplegic, and couldn't give a flying hoot what anyone thinks about it. This movie is the stuff of legends and inspires thoughts like how was it allowed to be made?? Or more accurately, who on Earth would have thought this movie was a good idea?? As others have summed up, the plot is a basic police procedural investigation into the death of a couple peripherally involved in the heroin trade, peppered by what would otherwise be the usual shootouts, fistfights, rubouts, car chases and hardboiled discussion scenes such material usually involves. What makes the movie special is No Legs, a cold, remorseless killer armed with double barreled shotguns fixed to the arm rests of his wheelchair, Ninja throwing stars on the wheel hubs, and in the peak of legless physical perfection due to his rigorous exercise routines that buxom blond bombshell mob molls watch with drooling desire. He may have lost his walking legs, but he's still a Mack Daddy Hustla Pimp who can satisfy the ladies.

Two scenes in the film stand out: The first an otherwise ordinary bar fight which Jaeckel's partner interrupts. Basically every low life in the joint turns on the doughty young thickly mustachioed and side-burned lounge suit wearing cop, and by golly if he doesn't wipe the floor with them in one of the most improbable outbursts of fighting skills ever staged. What makes it even more remarkable is just as the first punches are thrown Jaeckel senses something is wrong and follows his buddy into the bar, only arriving there after 10 minutes of non-stop head cracking action. That must have been one hell of a big parking lot.

The other scene is the film's tour-de-force set piece where SIX (6) mob toughs turn on Mr. No Legs as he relaxes by the pool with his sex bomb mob moll, and with a combination of legless martial arts, various underwater fighting maneuvers and assorted hidden weapons, he smacks them all down: Watching Mr. Slinker do Jedi back flips in his chair and beat down on the bad guys with the stumps of his lower appendages is not something you will soon forget. I agree with others when stating that this movie needed more No Legs and less police procedural: The squandered opportunity of a sequel examining how No Legs arrived at his legless state, came to grips with his disabilities and got his start as a hit-man is one of the great lost cult gems that was never made. This will have to do, and if you can find it you'll be an instant convert.

To avoid any confusion let me make clear that this film is an exercise in applied bad taste made long before the term "political correctness" was even coined. It also succeeds because the story is played completely straight without any sort of schlock regarding No Legs: If it had been a smarmy tongue in cheek parodic or satiric attempt to get laughs it would have fallen flat. It is ridiculous, absurd and potentially offensive, but the film has a kind of lunkheaded endearing naiveté about it that makes it all ten times the riot it would otherwise have been if played for laughs. You just can't make 'em like this anymore, and thank heaven for that.

9/10: I could see Mondo Macabro picking this one up, they have shown a willingness to present movies on DVD that other companies would never dare bother with, and I for one would love to see a re-release just because I know how many stupid Liberal idiots would protest it.


Let Mr. No Legs be a source of inspiration for all of us. Not because he's a relentless one-man killing squad, of course, but because he's the living proof that you can still chase your dreams and realize your ambitions even if you're physically disabled Yeah right, enough with this rubbish! "The Amazing Mr. No Legs" is a totally demented  in idea as well as execution  exploitation feature with a premise that is unique and refreshing and production values looking so cheap and amateurish that you simply have to show admiration for the cast and crew. If you just imagine what these guys could have accomplished if they had a proper budget at their disposal. The titular anti-hero controls the complete drug-business of a major town and acts as judge, jury and especially executioner whenever someone screws up or tries to double-cross him. Although he hasn't got any legs (duh!), everyone fears and obeys Mr. No Legs because he's merciless, is an expert in martial arts and drives around in a heavily armored wheelchair. When the sister of a dedicated cop gets killed in a drug execution it means the start of a devastating war between the good cops, the bad drug dealsand everyone in between. The script is surprisingly convoluted and well written, but those are not the main reasons why this film will stick to your memory. It has girl-on-girl bar fights, wild shootouts, bad acting, sword fights, odd cars and virulent chases and much more. "The Amazing Mr. No Legs" is extremely violent, but never actually shocking since the effects and stunts aren't exactly convincing. Some people might take offense upon seeing the fighting sequences involving the handicapped lead character, but then again, I don't suppose easily offended people are likely to put "Mr. No Legs" on their Christmas list. The slow-motion sequence where actor Ted Vollrath demonstrates his genuine martial arts skills is literally jaw-dropping. Ever seen a guy with no legs kick someone repeatedly in the stomach? No legs!! The titular ought to be considered as one of the greatest cult icons ever: a truly menacing, bad to the bone and self-reliable villain. "Mr. No Legs" is not an easy movie to come across, but definitely worth the search.


Mr. No Legs tells the tale of crime kingpin & drug lord D'Angelo (Lloyd Bochner) who has the hard as nails Mr. No Legs (Ron Slinker) as his bodyguard & as a gangland 'enforcer' who shoots first & doesn't bother to ask questions later. It's Mr. No Legs job to keep D'Angelo's drug business running smoothly so when one of his drug pushers Ken Wilson accidentally kills his girlfriend Tina when she discovers a load of D'Angelo's heroin in his apartment Mr. No Legs decides to just kill Ken as well & dump both of their bodies. Unfortunately Mr. No Legs didn't count on the fact that Tina's Brother Andy (Ted Vollrath) is in fact a cop with the local department, Andy & his partner Chuck (Richard Jaeckel) set about discovering Tina's killer & that means getting close to D'Angelo's drug operations which Mr. No Legs isn't happy about & believe me you don't want to make Mr. No Legs angry as I doubt you would like him when he's angry...

Directed by Ricou Browning (probably best 'remembered' as the creature from The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), how do you go from being a monster in a classic horror to making an obscure film like Mr. No Legs?) & also known as The Amazing Mr. No Legs here in the UK this is one unique film that doesn't quite hit the giddy heights that it could have but none-the-less provides a certain fascination & entertainment value. The script by Jack Cowden plays the material 100% straight, is a bit on the slow side during the first 40 odd minutes & has very little of interest apart from the main title character Mr. No Legs, for most of it's duration Mr. No Legs is a standard implausible 70's cop film (in fact you could say the story doesn't have a leg to stand on, ha, ha, ha) about busting up a drug business with little to recommend it except that for some bizarre reason some absolute genius thought it would be a good idea to have a man with no legs to be the films main bad guy, he has shotguns in the arms of his wheelchair, throwing stars & retractable blades. I've never seen anything quite like it that's for sure. Unfortunately Mr. No Legs isn't actually in the film that much, he dies at least 20 minutes before the end & he only has one proper fight scene which comes as a disappointment. I don't know why but I always thought Mr. No Legs would be the hero, you know fighting against all the odds & defeating all the bad guys in his fully equipped wheelchair & when he turned out to be the bad guy I was a bit surprised as I think the film would have worked better with him as someone to root for.

Director Browning was obviously working on a low budget & the infrequent action scenes vary, some are very good & well choreographed while other's are slow & sluggish. I must mention the pretty cool car chase at the end which lasts for the whole final 15 minutes, Browning probably didn't have much to work with but he sure tried to put as much action on screen as he could. My favourite scene in the film is when Mr. No Legs is facing up to someone who wants to kill him, Mr. No Legs climbs out of his chair & puts his fists up to the guy even though without legs Mr. No Legs doesn't reach past his waist! There are several other priceless, strange, funny & bizarre moments in the film but not really enough.

Technically the film is a bit rough around the edges, it's reasonably well made but it isn't going to win any awards with bland music, cinematography & production design. The acting is pretty poor, there are lots of dodgy hair-dos & moustaches while the actor who plays Chuck the cop is a William Shatner look-a-like.

Mr. No Legs seems to be a pretty obscure & hard to find film which to be brutally honest is no great loss to the world, harsh but true. There are some neat car stunts, a few nice fight scenes & some truly memorable sequences featuring Mr. No Legs as the toughest & meanest guy in the film even though he hasn't any legs. I'm not sure whether to give it a 6 or 7, I think I'll give it 7 just because I genuinely think the filmmakers tried & it's generally good fun.


My husband bought a copy of this movie from a bargain bin for $2.00 so I wasn't expecting much. Actually, it was so campy it was fun. And in today's world, very naive. Danny Bonaduce, one of the passengers, leaves a package in the boarding area and after he gets on the flight the package starts to smoke. Security rushes in, takes a casual look, and pronounces it a practical joke. Times sure have changed ! Bonaduce is in a number of scenes at the beginning of the movie, but although he is in the same section as the rest of the passengers on the plane, he is not seen anymore during the second half of the film. I guess they had to cut the budget.

This film is not about a "terrorist" as we think of them today. It was about one man, planning to kill another man, just a vendetta thing. The acting was awful, for the most part, but like I said, if you don't mind that-- the movie was worth $2.00. Obviously made for TV-- every twenty minutes there was a blackout for commercial insertion. And it was strange that the plane was carrying hundreds of passengers (according to the pilot), but we only saw about a dozen. From scene to scene, the number of extras would change. The cabin would be almost empty in one scene, then the next scene, there would be someone in every seat. Oh, well. It was fun. Not funny--- just fun.


From the maker of Love Boat, Melrose Place, and T.J. Hooker comes the made for TV movie, Murder on Flight 502! I love made for TV movies like this because it portrays a special blend of mindless cheesiness found only in 70s and early 80s TV plots that are pretty much extinct today. Have no doubts, this show sucks, but its entertaining because it's so corny and unbelievably minimal in content. There's a comforting sort of charm in realizing that TV creations like this were big hits in popular TV viewing of the time. All the characters are campy, cookie cutter stereotypes that over react and over explain everything so that we the viewers will not be confused due to misfortunes caused by subtlety finess. But its the lame plot that brings it all home. I can just imagine the TV execs of the day sitting around smoking pot and "brainstorming", when suddenly one them stands from his seat and announces, "Let's make a show about a bunch of people on an airplane!", and that was it, that was the plot and history was made. Long gone are the days when idiot proof plots and acting like this would engross a nation wide TV viewing audience. I won't ruin it for anyone (even though there's nothing to really ruin), but you pretty much know how the story is going play out within the first five minutes. The whole show is basically like watching a game of Clue (the board game) where the viewer tries to figure out who has the bomb on the plane. There's lot's of insipid comedy relief that's not really funny, and drama that has no depth. But don't get me wrong, it's white bread, mindless entertainment all the way. Truly a prime example of a lost art that produced this piece of 70s TV crap. Enjoy!


You know why I gave this a 10? Because I watched it two nights ago with a friend and we laughed the whole way through. It is so deadpan that you could never accuse the cast of taking it seriously. The production values are bottom of the barrel, at the beginning of the film the cast congregate in the TOA first class lounge that is supposed to be at JFK airport in New York, however the 'Theme Building' at LAX is clearly visible out the window as well as several palm trees. I am an airplane buff so I notice when things don't match up in films involving airplanes, but anyone can see that the different shots of the plane in this film are clearly of several different airlines, and the shot of the plane taking off is actually a plane landing. I remember watching it on TV when I was younger and thinking it reminded me of an Agatha Christie story on an airplane, and that's basically what it is. the story is good, the set is so so, an earlier review mentions the lawn furniture and cheese display in the planes upper deck, that got a good laugh from us as well. On an interesting note, the stewardess uniforms that Brooke Adams and Farrah Fawcett are wearing were actual uniforms for TWA and can also be seen in 'Catch Me if You Can' at the end when Leonardo DiCaprio climbs out of the plane through the toilet. This movie deserves audience participation, or at least a drinking game.


This is one of several movies that surely inspired the 1980 Jim Abrahams-David Zucker-directed disaster movie spoof Airplane!. But being a cheap made-for-TV affair this has to be the worst, although boasts an impressive cast.

It's all here: the cheap sets, the phony dialogue, the over-applied make-up (too much eye-liner and tinted hair and thats just the guys) and the stereotypical characters all with their own personal demons to deal with. The gin-swigging, hard-bitten crime writer, the grief stricken parents, the old guy with months to live, the jive-talking pop star (Sonny Bono sporting a hideous shirt and massive flares), the rugged, no-nonsense Captain (Robert Stack - amazingly also in Airplane!), the glamorous stewardess (a pre-Charlie Angels Farah Fawcett-Majors), the guy who has a heart attack but refuses to be treated by the only doctor on board because he blames him for his wife's death, the practical joke-playing precocious kid (Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge family) and the harassed ground staff including the airport manager with an air disaster AND toothache to deal with, and the psychologist bought in to give a profile of the passengers who gets more and more unconvincingly disheveled as the movie proceeds (see Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!).

Without giving too much away the most jaw-dropping moments are the corny dialogue between the Captain and the cabin staff (all two of 'em), the sequence where it's revealed that the priest is an imposter because he's wearing nail polish (nail polish?) and the bit where Robert Stack promises to show Danny Bonaduce round his cockpit a few minutes after threatening to spank him. But the most memorable scene is where a bomb-disposal officer (Pepper Martin) arrives in the airport departure lounge to diffuse a bomb which turns out to be a hoax. He sports some rather unwieldy protective clothing which he clearly didn't wear during rehearsals (assuming they did any) as he bumps into a pot plant when he exits. He also has some of the worst lines in the movie: "I was in a motel room when I got this call. I thought it was my wife!". Watch it at your peril!


If you've seen Airplane!, enjoyed Airplane! and perhaps wondered where Airplane! got some of its inspiration from, check out Murder on Flight 502. My brother found it for the astounding price of one dollar American, and for that single bill you get Robert Stack, Farrah Fawcett, Sonny Bono, and...Danny Bonaduce? Oh, but yes. And there's more.

As the film tepidly moves along, begging you to find the murderer among the passengers before anyone is actually murdered, you'll be treated to outrageous mid-70's fashion (brown is IN!), bizarre character backgrounds, and the hottest burgeoning romance this side of Harold and Maude, an elderly Jewish woman and an elderly Methodist known only as Uncle Charlie. "Ah...I know half the story already!" says the elderly woman slyly after Uncle Charlie introduces himself, and believe me, you will know every sundry detail of Uncle Charlie's hard knock life, even though it's probably better that you didn't.

You will see Sonny Bono sing, and you will realize why Cher was much better on her own. Robert Stack will make Bruce Willis in Die Hard look bad with his endless barrage of hard-boiled, sarcastic one-liners. But most of all, you will figure out who the murderer is, and you will be satisfied when they get their comeuppance.

No, there is no singing stewardess, no jive-talkers, no inflatable auto-pilot, no Leslie Neilsen. But unless you are unable to mock the earnest, but futile work of many to make a taut murder mystery shot almost entirely on a plane full of large, orange seats, you will like Murder on Flight 502. I promise.


This film falls firmly in the So Bad You'll Love It pile of bargain-bin wonders, a TV feature film, of the type made for audiences assumed to have an IQ equivalent of a retarded chicken.

The corny Dialogue reaches new heights of hilarity only matched by the Airport series, and its spoof Airplane! (Flying High). Cheap sets - an "airport lounge" that looks like the set of a cheap office where some equally cheap 70s show had just been filmed, the "aircraft" with impossibly wide expanses, giant square door, "hundreds" of passengers of which we only see a handful and sometimes the cabin seems empty, the TWO, yes TWO stewardesses, disappearing passengers (Danny Bonaduce stops appearing in the cabin half way through) a cockpit where nothing ever seems to happen except hilarious radio exchanges, a plane that takes off and in the next shot is shown landing (different models, different colour schemes even used in consecutive shots of the supposed airliner taking off), not to mention the impossibly ridiculous "script". Its hard to believe that this film was intended to be taken seriously. One of the priceless lines (about a bogus priest who wears nail polish - what???!!!)comes from a psychologist attempting to analyse why someone would impersonate a priest: "A clinical manifestation of religious hysteria!" - I kid you not. See it and prepare to laugh yourself silly.


747 en-route to London from New York is discovered to have a psychopath on board. Spelling-Goldberg TV-movie apes the theatrical plane-disaster films which were all the rage throughout the 1970s. The cast is a bizarre mixture of old and new faces, with Farrah Fawcett-Majors and Brooke Adams as stewardesses, Sonny Bono as a has-been musician, Polly Bergen as a flirtatious, drunken writer, Molly Picon and Walter Pidgeon as chummy oldsters, Hugh O'Brian (looking like Hugh Hefner) as a police detective, Danny Bonaduce as a 13-year-old prankster, and Robert Stack in the Charlton Heston role of the no-nonsense pilot (there are two other Stacks listed in the credits, perhaps making this a family affair). The low-budget doesn't allow the performers much to room to emote, with most of the in-flight action confined to First Class and the cockpit. There's also some hideous stock footage of emergency vehicles on the ground, as well as tiresome sidebars to George Maharis playing a security chief at Kennedy Airport with a toothache. The mystery surrounding stolen money gets muddled up alongside chatter about a bank robbery and a cop who was murdered, and a plot twist involving Farrah's character is just shucked off at the end. There's dumb-fun in watching this thing play out--if you're not too demanding--though one persistent question remains: why was the priest wearing fingernail polish?


It's amazing to me what some people will say about movies and most of it doesn't make sense. I bought this movie because it had a very beautiful woman who 4 years later land a usage role in a classic TV show. Robert Stack plays the role of Captain Larkin, Hugh O'Brien plays the role of Detective Daniel Myerson, and the beautiful young women was Farrah Fawcett majors who played the role of Karen White. This was your typical airplane movie where it took about 15 minutes or more to set up everybody roles that would occur on the flight 502. After the jumbo jet takes off Captain Larkin gets a radio call from security in New York City. First, a box was found in the first class section that security thought it was a bomb that turned out to be a smoking jack in the box. Next security finds a note in the lounge with an ominous message left by a passenger threatening to kill some of the passengers. At first, it is thought to be a sick joke, but soon a man posing as a priest and a flight attendant are killed. It is up to the captain to find the killer before the body count increases. All and all the weasel gives this movie 8 star. As far as Farrah Fawcett Majors goes, she did a great job at being the flight attendant in charge.


I have read several plot analysis written by the "pros" and they seem to be all wrong. There is no terrorist on the plane. The story is about a letter that is found in the first class airport lounge after an international flight has taken off. The letter states that there will be murders before the flight lands. The best part is the "WHO IS THE KILLER" set-up. Farrah is in one of her first roles and just as lovely as ever. Adam Brooks talent was not shown enough.


A lot of so called comedies get one or two big laughs in the whole film, often by reaching down for a reference to one or another substance that comes from the human body. Gregory's Girl makes me laugh every few seconds, and the only mention of a bodily excretion I can remember is Andy's "chat up line" in the school cafeteria: "Did you know that when you sneeze, it comes out of your nose at a 100 miles an hour?" Even though I thought I knew all the funny bits after seeing it so many times, each viewing finds me laughing at things I hadn't noticed before, as well as at all the other bits that never seem to grow stale.

There's the occasional Pythonesque line, as the football coach's description of the "two basic skills" of a goal scorer: "Ball control, shooting accuracy, and the ability to read the game." But Forsyth the writer creates a constant stream of little gems that are very much his own style of wry humour, taking real life and stretching it just that little bit further, but not so far that it's no longer recognisable. He's got teenage life down perfectly. Girls talk, plan, and seem to know what they want. Guys are clueless. Guys are obsessed by numbers. But girls know all the best ones.

It's fun to see how comic setups and situations from Gregory's Girl come back in Forsyth's Local Hero ("everyone's second favourite film", as Mark Kermode put it), deeper and more fully developed.

Despite the dated fashions and soundtrack, highly recommended.


To celebrate my 400th review for IMDb, I turn to another of my favourite films. "Gregory's Girl" was one of the first masterpieces of the eighties revival of the British film industry which was to produce the Oscar-winners "Chariots of Fire" and "Gandhi", and films of the calibre of "Local Hero" "Educating Rita", "The Missionary", "A Private Function" and "Hope and Glory".

Like many excellent British films, "Gregory's Girl" has a strong sense of place. Writer/director Forsyth set the film in his native Scotland, but not the tourist Scotland of glens, tartans and single malt whiskies. ("Local Hero", by contrast, is set in an idyllic Highland village). "Gregory's Girl" was the first-ever film to feature Cumbernauld New Town, a modern town between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Cumbernauld's town centre has been variously designated (chiefly by local residents) as the building in Britain most deserving of demolition or (by the international conservationist group DoCoMoMo) as one of the sixty key monuments of post-war architecture. This does not seem the most promising setting for a film, but Forsyth is able to invest the town's bleak modernist housing estates with a surprising amount of melancholy charm.

Gregory is a teenage schoolboy who falls in love with Dorothy, the attractive girl who succeeds him as centre-forward of the school soccer team. Gregory loses his position and is demoted to goalkeeper after the team lose eight games in a row; of his potential replacements, only Dorothy shows any talent, much to the disgust of the sexist games master Phil, who feels that the sport should be for boys only. At first Dorothy responds to Gregory's ardour with polite indifference, but when he asks her for a date, she accepts. Things do not, however, turn out quite as he had planned. Dorothy and two of her friends, Carol and Margo, have conspired to set Gregory up with a fourth girl, Susan, who has always been keen on him.

John Gordon Sinclair (Gregory) and Claire Grogan (Susan) have gone on to become well-known members of the British acting profession; Claire also had a pop career as the lead singer with Altered Images. None of the cast, however, were famous at the time, and few others went on to stardom. Dee Hepburn's beauty and enchanting performance as Dorothy made her seem a promising newcomer, but her acting career was to prove a brief one; her only subsequent role was in the much-derided soap opera "Crossroads". (According to one version, her lack of success was due to an inability to master any accent other than her native Scottish one).

Part of the film's appeal, however, is precisely that it does feature a cast of unknowns, easy to envisage as genuine Scottish teenagers. It made a refreshing change from American high school movies which, then as now, generally used established actors in their late twenties or even thirties; the unkind joke about Stockard Channing's character in "Grease" was that she would leave school when she passed her exams or had her menopause, whichever happened first.

Although the cast may be little-known, however, all play their parts superbly; there is not a single false note. Gregory's friends emerge as characters in their own right. Eric is a photography buff, Steve a talented cook. (There is an element of role reversal in that a girl is the star of the football team and a boy the star of domestic science classes). The slightly older Billy has left school and is working as a window cleaner's mate, giving him a certain status among his former classmates. Andy is the sort of know-all who is always trying to impress by coming out with nuggets of useless (and probably incorrect) information. According to him there are eight women to every man in Caracas, Venezuela; the dubious accuracy of this statistic does not prevent him and a friend from making a vain attempt to hitch-hike there, believing they will have more chance of picking up girls. Other notable contributions come from Jake D'Arcy as the manic Phil, who believes he is a football coach of genius despite the poor performances of his teams, and Allison Forster as Gregory's worldly-wise little sister Madeline.

Madeline, who is only ten years old but who has a depth of insight into human relationships that would put most agony aunts to shame, is not really a realistic character. "Gregory's Girl", however, is not an altogether realistic film, despite its ordinary setting. Like Forsyth's other masterpiece, "Local Hero", it contains elements of magical realism, the juxtaposition of the everyday with the fantastic. The strangest element was the boy wandering round the school dressed as a penguin. No explanation was ever given for his bizarre costume or for his inability to find his way to the right lesson, and yet this detail seemed perfectly at one with the mood of the film. Much of the humorous dialogue also had something of the surreal about it; Phil, asked by the headmaster how Dorothy will cope with having to shower with the boys, replies "Oh, she'll bring her own soap".

I was at university when I saw this film in the cinema in 1981, having left school two years earlier. I could therefore immediately sympathise with its teenage characters particularly the lanky, awkward Gregory, desperate to impress both his friends and the girls. It always struck me that he was less in love with Dorothy herself than he was with the idea of having a girlfriend to boast about; he is quite happy to end up with Susan and even more happy with the idea that having been seen with three girls in one evening has won him the reputation of being a ladies' man. I still think that the best-ever coming-of-age film is "Rebel without a Cause", but that is a tragic drama about situations outside most teenagers' experience. "Gregory's Girl" is the film which best captures what it is like to be an ordinary teenager. 10/10


Quite simply, one of the best British movies ever made, in fact one of the best movies, period. I watch it about three times a year and never tire of it. A film that is up there with the classic Ealing comedies and has every right to be classed alongside the best. John Gordon Sinclair exudes a gawky, gangling charm as the lovesick Gregory and the rest of the cast are perfect.Jake D'Arcy is wonderful as Phil Menzies, the ambitious sports master, the brilliant Chick Murray is the pompous headteacher, Dee Hepburn is Dorothy, the confident, dedicated new member of the soccer team, Gregory is besotted with her. Clare Grogan of Altered Images is Susan, who along with Carol and Margo conspires to make it an evening that Gregory will never forget. Who's going to be Gregory's Girl? Is it any of them, or is it his kid sister Madeline, 10-going-on-20 years old and his mentor. Special mention goes to Rob Buchanan and Graham Thompson as Gregory's mates Andy and Charlie, who feel that life is passing them by and resolve to get girlfriends. Charlie only has one line, right at the end of the film, but it remains my fave line. If you haven't seen Gregory's Girl, quite simply, you are inadequate!


This is one of the funniest and most warm-hearted films ever! John Gordon Sinclair and Dee Hepburn were absolutely wonderful in this story of teenage love and the sudden twists & turns that occur when you think you've met THE ONE, but then someone else...


What John Hughes did for eighties America, Forsyth has done for Eighties Britain with this little gem. It captures the boredom of a new town, then rips one character's life, such that it was, to pieces by having a girl replace him on the football team. Of course he can't help himself but to fall in love.

I adore this film - well, love it anyway. It quite simply makes me want to be a teenager again. But not in anywhere,USA like so many of Hughes' films, but at home in Scotland. It's just a shame that the three main players - John Gordan Sinclair, Claire Grogan, and to a lessor degree, Dee Hepburn - were never able to build on this.

A one off that has to be seen ....


Made at the time when video shops were appearing by the dozen in high streets all over the UK "Gregory's Girl" was a definite "must hire" for any schoolboy who had ever gazed longingly and hopelessly at some unattainable figure in the playground whilst she totally blanks him and chats unconcernedly to her mates,not knowing she carries his heart in her hands.It is at the same time an evocation of the sweet pain and joy of adolescent love and a grand comedy of young manners. I can see no fault in it despite repeated viewings over a quarter of a century.It is a perfect movie. John Gordon Sinclair,like Henry Thomas in the near - contemporary "E.T." created a nonpareil character,and like Master Thomas,will never be able to escape from it. That great droll Mr Chic Murray gives one of then great British movie performances as the Headmaster whose school,like some huge new - fangled machine,seems to have mastered perpetual motion. "Gregory's Girl" is awash with fine performances,full of the optimism and enthusiasm and joie de vivre of youth and,merely by watching it you can recapture that heady brew for 90 minutes or so.Any movie that can do that for a 66year old is a considerable work indeed.Please watch it.


One of my favorite things about this movie is that it captures a sort of 'parentless' world that further enhances its subtle and sweet adolescent tone. While there are adult characters in the film (most notably the coach, who is himself awkward and hardly authoritative), and while we meet Gregory's dad briefly, they come off as backdrop, and the overall impression is that this is like a live-action, Scottish, adolescent version of Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts' movies, where kids run about on their own seemingly at whim after school, but aren't necessarily concerned with being full of destructive mischief given that freedom. Indeed, the most mature character in the entire film may be the 10-year-old sister of the main character, and this flip-flop of roles is further illustrated by his sister's little suitor friend, Richard, acting ever the gentleman even through Gregory's very funny verbal onslaught.

The contrast between teenage lust/horniness against the innocent and awkward nature of teenage infatuation and the eventual sweetness of the first kiss are spread decidedly toward the latter here. This is not Porky's or American Pie, despite an opening scene that maybe belongs in that territory. This is a very sensitive movie that treats kids as if they're real people, and allows for that kernel of dirty-minded lust to exist side-by-side with the fresh and innocent electrical sweetness of young love, and nevertheless avoids seriousness through that sensitivity, and serves each comedic moment up in the most understated and warm way it can. It's very natural, and it captures best the way adolescence really is: A no-man's land between being an utter child and becoming an adult.

The director also achieved a great contrast in moods and environments, with the 1970s prog-jazz score and understated sterility of a boxy 1960-70s planned community with its plain institutional nature shown by the modern school and town planning. Somehow, it manages to bring everything about the characters and dialog into relief.

Great acting from a cast of mostly unknowns, a more-or-less aimless story that you don't want to end, and a lovely look back to a time period that I actually miss make this movie a favorite.


I adore this movie. Putting it into words as to why is probably far more difficult for this film than any of the others i have talked about on this website. Firstly i can totally empathise with the lead character.... even down to the the fantastic choice of bands displayed on his wall (the Jam and the Specials although i am not too sure about Patti Smith myself!) We've all probably been in the situations Gregory finds himself in during the movie and this just brings it all back... playing football in the school team (and chatting nonchalently to spectators when should have been keeping an eye on players bearing down on goal), getting into scrapes with teachers and of course that first date with the girl of your dreams. I always come away from watching this movie with a high feel good factor. Gregory ends up with Susan who is far more suited and better for him than Dorothy even if it takes the whole movie for him to discover this. You even feel it will work out for his mates Andy and Charlie as they trudge off at the end in the cheerful knowledge that they can start afresh chasing girls the next day (i love the way Charlie doesn't say a word thru the whole movie, goes along with Andy's silly schemes and eventually gets the last word). In addition to these characters there's a whole slew of fantastic characters such as Steve whos obsessed with his baking enterprise, the eccentric headmaster ("off you go, you small boys,") and of course Mr Menzies the bumbling PE teacher who isn't really taken seriously by the other male teachers in the school and is obsessed with putting together the perfect football team. Another thing i like is the way the younger kids seem more in control and knowledgeable than Gregory and his mates. Gregory's sister is the one with the fashion sense and is the guiding hand in trying to sort out his love life while its Gregory who is the petulant immature one when confronted by his sisters' young admirer at the front door. I think this movie has a refreshing view of the innocence of early school days as opposed to other films which may go down the darker Grange Hill route of drugs/bullying etc.


OK. I've seen this film about 20 times, and I think I may watch it at least 20 more. Why? You may ask. Well, how about the best movie ever?. Yes, it is a comedy, and yes it is very innocent, but if you have ever been in love or at least you think you have, I'm sure you will enjoy it.

I saw this movie on one of those late night showings and having nothing better to do I kept watching. From the beginning I was hooked, I just couldn't stop watching. Somehow It reminded me of my teenage years and how deeply you could fall in love.

This film show us that, for a movie to be really good, a large budget is not necessary, not even a bunch of stars (at the time they were pretty unknown, I think), just a great filmmaker and something important to tell, 'That's that. No eggs, no strudel. Nothing'.


Every now and again a cinema house comes out with a film so good it makes you want to weep and this is one of those films. Set in 1980's Glasgow and featuring a typically acerbic and avant garde Glaswegian screenplay, the film concerns the adventures of Gregory (failed soccer striker cum goalie) and his pursuit of Dorothy, the dashingly glamorous new addition to the school team. The course of false love refuses to run smooth of course and Gregory reels from being stood up and jilted by Dorothy, only to be gently coerced into the waiting arms of his secret admirer, Susan. There's some superb performances in this film from the wonderfully frustrated John Gordon Sinclair as Gregory, plus Dee Hepburn as Dorothy the stunning love interest. 'Gregory's Girl' was clearly filmed between Spring and early Autumn and there's one enduringly beautiful scene where Dorothy plays keep-up with a soccer ball, shot against the maternally basking backdrop of urban Glasgow, whilst a haunting saxophone laments and chases the fading daylight, bemoaning the inevitable and eventual closure of our younger years, brief and fleeting as the scene itself. Plenty of valiant support too from Robert Buchanan as Charlie who finds himself fresh out of luck with the ladies and is therefore reduced to irritation tactics in a vain attempt to court their favours, all of which goes wrong and he attempts to hitchhike from StrathClyde to 'Caracus', where he's heard that the women out number the men by 8 to 1. Clare Grogan is slow-burningly sexy as Susan and a special mention too for Allison Forster for her brilliant betrayal of Gregory's dour and deadpan sister Madeline. Watch out for a wandering and periodic cameo penguin, some 'Olympic-challenged' track and field events and the late Chic Murray as the Headmaster .."off you go you small boys". The film also shows all the hilarious vice rackets that existed around 80's schools during lunch breaks, plus the pompous 'cock of the walk' bravado that naturally seems to accompany young men around the fairer sex. I was saddened to note that 'Gregory's Girl' was the one and only on-screen appearance that some of the cast have made and I believe that to be a crying shame as the cast was talented beyond belief. That said however, this is a magnificent statement of young love from start to finish and everyone of any age currently in love (or theoretically), ought to see it, sooner rather than later.


This is it, it's Gregory's Girl. Don't look up reviews just buy it watch it and enjoy it. It's Napolean Dynamite 25 years before Napolean Dynamite. It's charming, naive, funny with a capital F and is a slice of early 1980's life worth revisiting again and again. If you've never seen it then stop everything and go to ebay or amazon and get buying. You may get hit with a bus and never get to see this film if you leave it any longer, so go now, stop everything and enjoy Gregory's Girl. Notable performances from all but watch out for John Gordon Sinclair who plays the Gregory, David Anderson playing his dad and Rab Buchanan as his friend. Scattered gems of performances from many many others such as Alex Norton and Chic Murray. It's in my "top 5 movies ever made" category for sure.


I love this movie, and in re-watching it again I was impressed by Allison Forster's performance as Madeline. However, in looking on the internet, this appears to be her only work. Does anyone know what became of her? I would have hoped that someone that talented would have moved on, but I found nothing. This movie is a gem. I try to watch it once a year because it brings back long-forgotten memories of what it was like to ask for your first date, the awkwardness of the first kiss, and the whole new dimension of relating to the opposite sex. Thanks for any information you have on Allison, if only I had had a sister like that... davidjanmellinger@yahoo.com


I remember going to the cinema to watch 'Grease',while 'Gregorys Girl 'was the support. What an anti climax when 'grease' came on while my mind kept flashing back to the wonderful ,previous film i had watched before.

Must of watched the film a million and nine times since and never tire from watching what was the sweetest ,funniest and atmospheric film with the greatest soundtrack ever. I loved the end to the film and whenever i had a date with a girl in the eighties and nineties my mind would flashback to a certain clock tower, a white jacket (without the stain),a beret,whistling, horizontal dancing and kissing with numbers.Unfortunately my dates would never hit the heights of Gregorys date but if i was fortunate to get the girl home then without fail the Gregorys video would be shown to what would normally work in my favour. Bella Bella !


I first watched this film in 'The Kelburn' in Paisley. Gregory's Girl wasn't acting; Gregory's Girls was real life. I laughed so hard I was almost ill. We were very proud of this film in Central Scotland. Up until this point, Scotland had produced very few films that displayed us as normal, ordinary people, without stereotype image of heather, kilts shortbread, whisky and Orange Walks. Everyone in the central belt of Scotland seemed to know someone in the film.

Graham Thompson, who played Charlie, played in a local punk rock band and announced that he would not be at band practice the following week as he was 'making a film.' The band laughed at him. The film still has the same effect on me 25 years later.

My sister in Canada watched it on TV out there with voices dubbed into American accents - sacrilege! I later learned that it cost more to pay American accents to dub the voices, than it did to make the original film in Scotland. My uncle in Australia watched in a cinema in Melbourne and said that he stood up and cheered at the end.

Barry Norman once said that this was one of his favourite films of all time.


In my top ten movies list. Brilliantly captures the feeling of the voyage through adolescence. The excitement and anticipation of "the first time" (first kiss etc) is beautifully expressed by Madeline "The best part's before you taste it..."

This movie is not for viewers who require explosions to satisfy their entertainment criteria but if you wish to relive the joy, the sweet pain, the magic and the limitless possibilities of your adolescence let Billy Forsyth transport you. There are so many elements packed into the film that I love. Seeing a glimpse of Phil Menzies alone but happy in his garden adds an unexpected depth to his character.

What I enjoy about the film is that on the surface it may appear to lack depth but the depth is there if you want to find it and admirably Forsyth leaves profound moments like Madeline's words of wisdom understated and ,for me, only joyfully discovered after repeated viewing.

I hope this movie takes you to a similar beautiful place as it has me.


I really love this simple, unforced comedy about a boy named Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) who falls for a straight talking female footballer named Dorothy (Dee Hepburn). That's it. That's the set-up. Director Bill Forsyth, who also wrote the script, populates this, his second feature, with characters we can relate to so easily that watching them trip over their hormones makes us care and feel embarrassed for them.

Forsyth's first outing, "That Sinking Feeling", also gave us very real characters and placed them in situations not far removed from the everyday. The director's third feature, "Local Hero", added a dash of surrealism to the naturalism.

For me, though, "Gregory's Girl" strikes the most perfect balance and is never less than highly engaging. The director's use of small children is wonderfully surreal, as are his characterizations of various school teachers, a soccer coach and Gregory's almost invisible dad. Robert Buchanan, who plays the lovable Andy, also appeared in "That Sinking Feeling", and here turns in an unaffected, terrific performance as a horny youth who longs to travel to Caracas, Venezuela, where -- it's a "well known fact!" -- the women seriously outnumber the men.

The film's resolution is appropriately low key and Sinclair's comic timing is textbook stuff.


Gregory is your average Scottish teenager, interested in football (soccer for us in America)and girls, not necessarily in that order. He falls in love with the new striker on the team, a girl who took his place. When he finally gets up the nerve to ask her out, things don't turn out exactly as he plans.

I first saw Gregory's Girl shortly after it was released, when I was an awkward and shy teenager myself. John Gordon Sinclair does a realistic and believable portrayal of Gregory, and the fickle love of an adolescent. I also find the scenes between Gregory and his sister Madeline very touching and heartwarming.

This is a feel good movie dealing with adolescent crushes, and is well worth seeing. I wish that it had gone on longer and shown us more of the characters' lives--it just finished too soon.


Few films i would describe as being a joy from start to finish. Maybe this is the only one. When things go bad they're never that bad for Gregory, okay he loses his place in the football team, but he's in love - who cares? And when he finally gets his dream date with Dorothy and is lead from pillar to post, by first one girl then another he takes it all in his stride. And why not...he's young, it's a lovely Summer's day in Cumbernauld...it's all there for the taking.

If this film doesn't make you smile, you either have no heart or the Scottish accents are put you off. Give them a chance, us Scot's folks flock, like the rest of the world to see films from the US - it's not that difficult. So go on, search this movie out...the esteemed critic Barry Norman has this great movie in his top 100 films of the century, furthermore it's the only post 70's UK film...so check it out.


Simply one of the most magnificent films ever made. Witty and intelligent underestimate the sheer craft and ingenuiety of Forsyth's finest work to date. Probably the finest he will ever. John Gordon Sinclair gives the role of Gregory like a dream as if it was written for him. Gregory is a very similar role to that played by Peter Capaldi in Forsyth's follow up Local Hero which is a sound piece of work. Dee Hepburn has a wonderful. Simply watch it as it will move you strangely.


....if you were a teenager in the 80's. But to be honest, it's pretty much an everyman story for anyone who has had a crush on a member of the opposite sex. "Gregory's Girl" is one of three (the others being 'This Is Spinal Tap' and 'The Italian Job') that I could recite from start to finish with all the voices and everything. Favourite bits - probably the little moments that you only spot after repeated viewings; when the teachers spot Gregory weaving across the empty playground when he's late for school - "does he think he's invisible?!", the banter with his pal Steve - "fud, fud, fud, is that all you think about, you're unnatural pal, you're a freak!", Andy & Charlie's doomed attempts to pick up girls, Chic Murray's delightful cameo as the headmaster - especially the piano playing scene, "off you go, you small boys" and watch out for the worst high jumper in the world. All I can say, if you watch this film with a prospective partner and they don't like it, dump them immediately, y'all hear me?


Until it was derailed by a rather disappointing ending, this was perhaps the cutest movie that I had ever seen. They are simply not capable of making this kind of film in the States...it has far too leisurely a pace to be even considered a worthwhile project in the U.S. It is just so gentle and laid-back that it won me over almost immediately, and even with the weak finish, it's still one of the finest British comedies that I have ever seen.


The scene in Bill Forsyth's 1981 film Gergory's Girl that goes a long way in cementing just how special, just how close it is to the work of genius, is the one in which, on preparation for a date with a girl, the lead male character is reminded of a joke that is what we perceive as a really dirty and unnecessary one given the scenario. The lead, sitting there struggling to recall it, suddenly does so and bursts out laughing. Such is the brilliance of the comedy in Gergory's Girl, that one of the best sequences of comedy is, in fact, one in which a joke is established to exist but never revealed thus acting as a moment of comedy all by itself. In this sequence, the boundaries between what can be classed as good, quality coming-of-age comedy and mindless, puerile coming-of-age comedy are established. Whereas many in numbers but lesser in greatness coming-of-age comedies from more recent times enjoy piling on smut and vulgarity, Gregory's Girl is able to establish such a thing exists within the universe of these characters but, crucially, amongst all the funny stuff going on around it, is able to produce laughs out of it without ever actually resorting to it. This is something more recent films of this ilk do from the off and rely on as a genuine source of humour throughout; without actually getting anywhere.

The film takes place in and around a Scottish school and sees youngster Gergory (Sinclair) whittle away his days milling in and around the premises of this school, in which he will go to class; talk to friends and spend a lot of his time playing football. Things change with the introduction of Dorothy (Hepburn), a girl that stumbles into Gregory's world when it appears she wants to be a member of the football team. Like her eventual role in Gregory's life, she is clinical and the centre of all the attention in her role on the field, as her striking ability raises eyebrows. Forsyth's film is light-hearted and jovial, taking universal subject matter and looking at a pretty important point in a young man's life whilst opting to journey it down a route of soft core and fairly light comedy whilst systematically dealing with pretty serious issues of gender equality and acceptance. In short, the man pulls everything off rather effortlessly.

Indeed, the film opens with a shot of Dorothy jogging but it is only her silhouette by way of a long shot we observe her. If the film revolves around Gregory and his tribulations, then the film does a good job in establishing a sense of distance between viewer and object of the protagonist's desire. This, as the use of a silhouette renders the jogging figure close to angelic, not necessarily a prize that needs to be reigned in, but a figure zipping along at a distance in which that sense of the unattainable and the beautiful are both captured at once. The film establishes Gregory's thinking during the film's point of attack as that of one that isn't necessarily attuned to what it is that's around him, indeed, he likes football and girls but doesn't seem to put an awful lot of thought into them; somewhat dismissive of football as "just entertainment, for fun". Despite this, football and football practise will take on a more important role for him with Dorothy's introduction to the team when the two items he's interested in most clash.

The film's attitude toward gender will see a girl play football to a rather high level and consequently provide us with a male character in the form of Steve (Greenlees) as an individual whom looks as if he's at the top of his game in the art of cooking and culinary activity. This having of a male dominate the kitchen space, indeed he corrects a female character on whether it ought to be female dominated, as well as a female do the same thing to a football field could be read into as a going against generic gender roles in society. But the film is more preoccupied with Grgory's plight of discovery, and the little things that come with observing and getting to know the girl more and more. Through Dorothy, he attempts to learn the Italian language by way of joining a class and fast-tracking most of it out of eagerness mixed with desperation; this, as he comes to terms with the thoughts and feelings that accompany wanting to ask the girl out on a date and confines in his younger sister for advice.

I think there's real heart in Gregory's Girl, a sweet exploration of a character who seems to fumble his way through life but comes to realise certain things. There is a shot nearer the end which echoes the film's opening, that of a girl shot in silhouette from a relatively long standpoint, only Gregory this time accompanies her in what is an item linked to the very first sequence of the film. With Gregory's presence this time apparent, there is that sense that he's earned the right to share the 'space', which was once seemingly elusive, as these two people are framed in the same manner. As far as coming of age tales that fall into the realms of comedy go, Gregory's Girl has more than enough laughs as well as a genuine fondness for its characters of whom it pays close attention to, indeed enough to recommend over a good number of other films of this ilk.


When one thinks of the best school based films this gem is often overlooked in favour of well known American films which is a shame as Gregory's Girl is just as good. It certainly has a very British feel to it, Gregory plays in the school's football team which has lost every match of their season, instead of shouting at the team the coach wearily holds a try out for new players. The only person trying out who is any good is Dorothy... the coach doesn't want a girl on the team but reluctantly lets her join as he really has nothing to lose. As soon as he sees her play Gregory falls in love with her and sets about getting a date with her.

John Gordon Sinclair does a great job as awkward teenager Gregory and there is a fine supporting cast including Dee Hepburn as Dorothy, Clare Grogan as Susan, a friend of Dorothy's who likes Gregory and young Allison Forster who, in her only acting role, was delightful as Gregory's sister Madeline. It helps that the main actors aren't in their mid-twenties and the school is clearly populated by children.

While the main plot is obviously about Gregory there are also plenty of other interesting characters including two boys who work for the school magazine who make money selling photographs of Dorothy in an unofficial shop they've set up in the boys' toilets, here we also see Gregory's brother selling assorted pastries and various boys having a smoke. Even though there are lots of surreal moments this film seems to be one of the most realistic portrayals of a school; the children all seem like real school children, at least from a British perspective. We don't have the standard group of cliques we would get in a US school drama and nobody really cares that the football team is useless.

I'd certainly recommend this film to anybody wanting a good laugh and a fairly accurate depiction of life at a British School.


I can't add much to the great comments already on here and I will not bore you with anecdotes about growing up in Cumbernauld. What I will say though is that as a teenager, on the first couple of viewings, I lost interest after Carol turns up instead of Dorothy to tell Gregory she's not coming. I was not happy. I thought, "How could she do that to Gregory/me?" I could not enjoy the rest of the movie and could not care less that Gregory got to parade around with 3 other cute lassies.. I guess though that says more about me at that time than anything else.

I'm much better now.

Gregory and Susan for ever.

Magic


Watching 'Gregory's Girl' for the first time in over two decades, one is immediately struck by reminders of when it was made: the grainy film, the dreadful soundtrack, the big hair of both its male and female characters. But one is soon also reminded of why it proved such a massive hit, in spite of it's low budget, unpretentious nature. For at its heart, Bill Forsyth's film captures two eternal realities, the (potentially charming) essential uselessness of a certain sort of teenage male, and the particular uselessness of just about all males when confronted by a sufficiently pretty girl (Dee Hepburn, although Clare Grogan, later a pop star, appears in a secondary role). But the gentle narrative eschews the obvious cliché, and it's also nice to see a story set in a Scottish housing scheme that isn't just a tale of drugs and A.I.D.S. It still feels funny and true after almost thirty years.


For anybody thinking that Scotland's only worthwhile contribution to televisual entertainment was "Trainspotting" and endless episodes of "Taggart" might like to consider this fondly-remembered teen rom-com from the early Eighties. Normally, I'm wary of anything that I find in the pages of the Sunday Mail but this (DVD freebie) was a pleasant surprise indeed. It's short and sweet, offering a more believable teen romance than the overwhelming majority of clean-cut American offerings. It has aged somewhat, naturally, and it does have a faint whiff of TVM about it but there is an undeniable charm beneath its gritty Highland exterior.

John Gordon Sinclair plays gawky teen Gregory, a striker with as little luck with the girls as he has in front of goal. In fact, his coach (Jake D'Arcy) is so disappointed in Gregory's form that he moves him into goal and holds an open training session to find his replacement. To Gregory's delight and surprise, his replacement is the beautiful girl Dorothy (Dee Hepburn) and Gordon falls instantly in love. But his nerves and inexperience threaten any chance he may have with her. Can Gregory score on and off the field or will someone else become Gregory's girl?

Very much a gentle comedy, "Gregory's Girl" is a refreshing change from the torrent of turgid teen comedies that constantly surge from the US. Instead of being confident, good-looking and rich, this movie is full of awkward, tongue-tied, spotty teens that are much more plausible. It's also full of funny moments in the background, such as the hopeless high-jumper or the penguin wandering the corridors of the school trying to find the right room. Sinclair is perfect as the teen on his journey of self-discovery but Hepburn hasn't much to do besides play "futbae" and look pretty. Claire Grogan, as Dorothy's classmate Susan, is arguably the best of the lot and together with Sinclair, were the only two main actors in this to go on to do anything else afterwards. If you're not used to Scottish accents then you may find some of the dialogue passing you by but in truth, you get used to it. But then again, my fiancée is Scottish so I probably have something of a head start!

It does take a while to get going and the ending does feel slightly rushed but "Gregory's Girl" is a movie worth watching. Feeling every inch like the tortured, angst-ridden romance that it should be, it's just so good to see a film that actually recreates the terror and fear that is associated with one's first love as opposed to overly sanitised teen love stories like "10 Things I Hate About You" or "Clueless". It's also good to see a Scottish film that has nothing to do with drugs and "murdur" and is instead a light-hearted comedy. Having never seen "Gregory's Girl" before yesterday, I couldn't quite work out why it was held in such high regard but there is no denying that there is something special about this movie. Make sure you get the full DVD version and not the freebie from the paper - no subtitles!


As a British adolescent at the time this film was released, I was very grateful for it. As with most British movies, it's shot like crap but you know, it really doesn't matter when the script and the performances complement one another so well.

I've grown up with it and still find something to smile about every time, much the same way that I do when listening to Jonathan Richman's mid-80's albums Rockin and Romance and Jonathan Sings.

There's a really beautiful balance of knowing and naivety in most of the characters. Whilst the very slight main plot featuring Dorothy and the football team was what the publicists concentrated on, it's Gregory and the supporting characters who hold all of it's charm. They continue what Forsyth had captured in debut That Sinking Feeling and which, tragically, he never seems to have recaptured.


Gregory's Girl is a forerunner of films like Napoleon Dynamite and 40 Year Old Virgin and subtle like the former, not obvious like the latter. If you were ever an innocent adolescent and can recall your first infatuation with a girl with a wry smile, then this will make you laugh at yourself and cry at the same time - what more can you ask from a film? I can still remember the cinema, the seat, the friends I first saw this film with - myself British and a friend Ausralian, both weeping with laughter as we recognised ourselves in that gawky Scottish lad, and his hilarious younger sister. Bill Forsyth went on to the film "Local Hero", which is also right up there with the greats in my scoring. He made films about real people and all our idiosyncrasies, and made me feel and enjoy at the same time. Favourite scene follows favourite scene - when Gregory walks in front of a car, his father is the driving instructor, when Gregory lies on the ground with "not" Gregory's Girl, held onto the surface of the earth by "the mysterious force of gravity", the boys out taking photos of a nurse undressing using so many elephants at F8, Gregory spraying deodorant onto his shirt, his friend the expert chef, etc. I guess many Americans find the Scottish language incomprehensible - so put on the subtitles! I can understand and enjoy Napoleon - you can enjoy Gregory!