Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

Swinging London days, so poor Hunter Davies' pleasant sub-Salinger novel, about the sexual tribulations of a grammar school sixth-former (he longs for something a bit more up-market than the snotty-nosed local bints), gets the full gloss treatment. Jamie McGregor (Evans) worked part-time for a small local Co-op, but here he's much more smartly located in a supermarket; the Stevenage council estate where he lives looks like King's Road-cum-Carnaby Street, fairly dripping with dolly birds; his dream fantasies are Dick Lester lookalikes, using speeded-up motion for good measure; and when he finally gets invited to a party, the scene looks as fashionably clichéd as the photographer's studio antics in Antonioni's Blow-Up. Donner's eagerness to pour 'swinging style' and pop songs over everything makes nonsense of the socially critical attitudes that filter weakly through from the script (by Hunter Davies himself). So charmless as to be almost unwatchable.