Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

christopher-underwood Richard Lester directed, 'A Hard Day's Night'. which came out the year before this Boorman classic and has cast a heavy shadow over it ever since its release. The fact that 'Catch Us If You Can' is a better movie matters not for, Dave Clark Five were not The Beatles. The whole look of the Boorman film is great, properly anticipating the changes in architecture and advertising and the spot on script by Peter Nichols, is faultless. We see the 'kids' gambolling about like clowns or tearing about in their mini-moke or jaguar cars, but always noticing in the background, at the end of the street, along the pavements, the bewildered look of passers by. Straight out of the fifties, with their hats and scarves and overcoats, properly reflecting that whilst the youngsters were pushing for something/anything in the early 60s, for the adult population, even of London, it was all more than a little strange, something from another world, that will soon go away. I remember liking this upon its original release and whilst connecting with it and considering it an exciting first film from a new director, it did seem a shame the songs weren't better and it was far from cool to admit any liking for Dave Clark and his 'bang bang' drumming. So the film has been ignored, which is sad, because now were both films played side by side, the Beatles film music probably wouldn't seem that much better. Another shame for me is that the lovely Barbara Ferris seemed to go down with the film too, here she has a lot of work to do playing off Mr Clark, who carries himself well enough but knows his limitations. See this film for its excellent picture of UK c.1964/5 and for the sheer joie de vivre and the marvellous free flowing cinematography.

hbrix More road movie than rock movie, CATCH has a surprisingly mature, melancholy tone for a British beat picture. That it has any tone at all is a tribute to director Boorman, whose characteristic fusion of the mythic with the ordinary is already evident in this his first movie, and writer Peter Nichols, who imbues the surprisingly engaging supporting characters with a quality of personal yearning and need for escape that spans generations. Boorman's preoccupation with water, rigorous yet dreamlike use of landscape and tendency to celebrate or at least acknowledge the antiquated are just as vivid here as they are in HOPE AND GLORY. Too detailed and ambling to be anything but opaque or irrelevant on video, I suspect.

eisor88 I'd heard a lot about this film before I ever had the chance to see it. I was predisposed to be dismissive.However, when I finally DID see it, I was taken quite aback.The director, John Boorman, is very negative about this film in his recent autobiography. I must disagree. There is a lazy school of thought that sees this movie as a straight rip-off of "A Hard Day's Night". Again, I dissent.When I sat down to watch this film I expected something approximating to the stock descriptions: derivative, formulaic, just going through the motions.I was quite unprepared for the reality of "Catch Us If You Can", which is a far more challenging and rule-breaking movie than its reputation would suggest. (I can only suppose that some people see what they expect to see.)It surprised me that a vehicle for a pop band should be so downbeat and thought-provoking. Another IMDb reviewer rightly drew attention to the wintriness of this film.There are two vital encounters in the film, once Steve (Dave Clark) and Dinah (Barbara Ferris) have fled from the TV commercial they are meant to be filming. The first is with a collection of hippie-esque drop-outs hiding out in rural ruins, the second with a middle-aged couple in a large townhouse in the affluent spa-town of Bath.Their moves are monitored at a remove by a sinister advertising man, Leon Zissell, who seems to have a Svengali-like preoccupation with Dinah. To this end he dispatches two henchmen to pursue the errant couple. The elder of the two (not THAT old, as somebody remarks - probably in his mid-30s) is loyal, but at a fancy dress party in Bath his younger colleague readily succumbs to the charms of a pretty young lady.I could try to encapsulate the plot of this film, but what matters far more is its atmosphere. Steve and Dinah are travelling (initially in a stolen E-Type Jag) towards an island off England's Devon coast that Dinah - young and successful - is contemplating buying. (This island conceit must be a straight lift from "La Dolce Vita", where the actress Marcello Mastroianni's character is "servicing", dreams of buying just such an island.)The soundtrack is surpisingly strong. There are some straightforward songs from the Dave Clark Five, but otherwise they strive to provide something less stamped with the band style.Like one of the other IMDb reviewers, I would have to agree, having seen this film, that it is actually stronger, viewed simply as a film, than "A Hard Day's Night". (Where it obviously falls down is the fact that its soundtrack - excellent as it actually is - is NOT by The Beatles.)Don't patronise this movie, or damn it with faint praise. Don't condemn it for not being what it isn't (a Beatles film), but rejoice in the boldness of its departure from the Cliff-Beatles formula.The scene in Bath with Robin Bailey and Yootha Joyce is worth the price of admission alone!

JekyllBoote-1 Recently I bought the DVD of "A Hard Day's Night", and spent a whole weekend watching and re-watching it. You might gather from this that I love the movie, as indeed I do, so what I'm going to say now may very well shock you: "Catch Us If You Can" is a better movie. Of course it wouldn't exist without the pioneering example of "A Hard Day's Night", which changed youth/pop movies for ever, but it really is a better movie.I'm always inclined to see it as the final instalment of an early- to mid-60s trilogy of movies that began with Ken Russell's "French Dressing", and continued with Michael Winner's "The System". (I'm tempted to extend this to a tetralogy, with Richard Lester's "The Knack" as the last instalment. But, unlike the other movies, "The Knack" was a critical and commercial success - Palme D'Or at Cannes, and all that.) There's a continuity of mood, if not theme, between these movies, a strange mixture of exhilaration and wistfulness. The "phoney" 60s, a sort of hangover of the late 50s, lasted in Britain until about 1962 (although there were intimations of what was to come in Anthony Newley's "The Strange World of Gurney Slade"), but the Satire Boom, followed quickly by the Beatles, ushered in the real 1960s."Catch Us If You Can" takes a number of audacious risks from the very start: the Dave Clark Five are not a pop group playing themselves, but a team of stuntmen working on a series of TV commercials; their songs are performed off-screen as the soundtrack to the on-screen action; the movie insists strongly on the wintry season in which it was filmed: the frozen milk, the unbearably cold conditions of the meat warehouse, the orange growing safely inside the glass conservatory, the snowy countryside.There is little of the lightness of mood of "A Hard Day's Night". "Catch Us If You Can", like its saturnine hero, Steve (Dave Clark), is strangely downbeat and melancholy. Not even the kittenish Dinah (Barbara Ferris) is capable of raising Steve's mood of dejection for very long. Absconding from the commercial they are filming, Steve and Dinah make an erratic Pilgrim's Progress across the West Country en route to an island, off the coast of Devon, that Dinah is contemplating buying. On the way they meet a group of proto-hippies (the term would not be in widespread use until the middle of 1966) squatting in abandoned buildings on Salisbury Plain, and a bickering middle-aged couple living in the opulent surroundings of Bath's Royal Crescent. In a sense, all of these people are in flight from the modern world.The ultimate source of Steve's dejection is Leon Zissell, the svengali-like advertising executive, who is quite evidently besotted with Dinah. Zissell casts his shadow wherever the absconding couple might find themselves.Guy and Nan, the bickering middle-aged couple, seem somewhat sinister at first, but they show themselves to be essentially good-hearted. Both are collectors, and we initially assume that Steve and Dinah are to be added to their collections. Actually, Nan collects old clothes, while Guy collects old phonograph recordings, photographs, etc., ("The pop art of yesteryear"). Anyone viewing "Catch Us If You Can" nearly forty years on will see how it has now been added to Guy's collection itself, a clever and telling touch. (Touching, too.)The Austin Powers movies, funny and clever as they often are, have seriously distorted younger people's perceptions of the 1960s. Amidst all the "grooviness" there was always a quieter, more reflective aspect to the 60s (e.g. "Blow-Up"), and "Catch Us If You Can" captures this. Clear your mind of preconceptions: this movie is NOT a failed attempt at re-making "A Hard Day's Night", but a brilliantly successful attempt to make something quite different - a thoughtful, grown-up film that stands the test of time.