English movie Director Clive Donner was just coming off career apex, the international box office blast "What's New Pussycat" when he took on another sex romp, a snapshot of the Swinging Sixties starring Barry Evan as 18 year old virgin Jamie and his vain and glorious attempts to get laid and go to University while being a delivery boy and going to High School, "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" . Based on Hunter Davies book of the same name, it survives as much more than a psychedelic lark with a pretty good sound track.
Jame, a romantic at heart works his way through England's class structure from a working class bimbo through a middle class girl with her eye on the vicar to an upper middle class inbred twit (the late great Angela Scouser, check out her performance in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" as well) before getting his heart broken by middle class free spirit Judy Gleeson in her first post-"To Sir With Love" performance. Jamie ends up back on the merry go round and off to University.
Donner's movie questions many things considered sacrosanct at the time, not least Jamie's warning to Angela (Judy) that you had to know a person before you sleep with them. Angela looks at him as though he has lost his mind. And while Donner, filling the screen with dolly birds (boobs and butt but no bush please, we're British) is having it both ways, the movie is both warn towards its Candice but still jaundiced and witty.
What's odd is that in retrospect it is the story of a generation of teens who, once removed from WW2, were moving into uncharted cultural waters, Jamie is a gentle kid completely bemused but loving towards his parents, his father with his football pools and his mother studying the classics and serving leftover blancmange for dinner. Angela is a little further removed. But these are still very young people, 18 year olds. The Draconian excess isn't that at all, it's just dayglo sticks. Essentially, Donner places the generation gap as just business as usual for Jamie. The revolution was in fashion and style but the essential Englishness didn't change.
The soundtrack has former Spencer Davis Group barely teen keyboard players new group Traffic play the theme song, a terrific roundelay with a crap middle 8 and his former group get the best moment, performed during a Church dance and movie highlight, "Looking Back" where the lights keep going out. The love theme by "Been A Long Time" by Andy Ellison of John's Children, is horrible.
Movie: A
Music: B+