Cinema: NEW MOVIES

Smashing Time

Sad but true: Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave are not female reincarnations of Laurel and Hardy. At first blush it must have looked like a great idea—Lynn is a great big broth of a girl whose eye-batting optimism thinly masks a steely and ruthless ineptitude; Rita, with the wispy, downtrodden look of a disgruntled rodent, is obviously born to be picked on. Moreover, the girls did awfully well together in the comic moments of 1964’s The Girl with Green Eyes.

They still complement each other neatly, but the interplay between them lacks the subtle Laurel and Hardy mix of hostility and mutual dependence, not to mention their patient skill at milking a gag. And so Smashing Time ends up as little more than a lot of pratfalling and pie-throwing á la mod.

The scene is London, with its wild ways and “soopah” swingers, where Lynn and Rita have come from the provinces to seek fame and fortune. En route to both, there is much stumbling into mud puddles, through roofs and down excavations. There is a paint-spraying scene in one restaurant and a pie-throwing scene in another (both of which seem endless), and a clumsy take-off of an art preview, in which mechanized sculpture chases people around and sprays some more paint on them.

A few funny moments are provided in Lynn’s nightmarish seduction by Ian Carmichael playing a guards officer type as impeccably drunk as he is dressed. But Smashing Time has too much bashing to be smashing—and is added evidence that slapstick has replaced satire in the once fine and delicate art of British comedy.