I Watch Films: Confessions Of A Pop Performer

 

Confessions Of A Pop Performer

Timmy Lea from Confessions Of A Window Cleaner is back, still cleaning windows, still shagging lonely housewives and having to escape in his underwear when their husbands return. His boss and brother-in-law Sid has a plan to moonlight as the manager of a pop band. Due to some misunderstandings he gets them under contract sight unseen, as they were DJing rather than playing. When they go to collect them for a gig arranged by one of their window-cleaning/sex clients, the drummer injures his hand, leading Timmy to step in.

The film has a cynical view of the music industry. To try and get some hype for the band (who Sid renames from Bloater to Kipper to try and make them sound classier) they pack a gig with elderly women from Lea’s mother’s club. Lea flirts with a newspaper reporter who is the daughter of the editor, continually making a fool of himself, while she over-intellectualises it. They get some good copy from it.

By ingratiating a TV host they get on his show Star Knockers (loosely based on real TV show Opportunity Knocks). This goes wrong, but they’re still called for a royal charity show (the Queen and Prince Phillip’s faces are unseen, their hands doing the acting). This of course brings us to a farcical ending, with Lea performing in a spangly dress and the Climax Sisters and others getting involved in a brawl on stage that ends up with several characters stripped.

There are some sitcom-style scenes at the Lea family home, where Lea’s dad, still working at the lost and found office, brings home a gorilla suit. This sadly breaks Chekov’s rule. There’s quite a good bit where they all get dressed up to watch Tim on the TV, but otherwise it doesn’t really add anything. In fact that’s probably the most disappointing part of the film, it sets up individual scenes that are more-or-less entertaining, shows us a bum or some boobs, then forgets all about anything that might have made later parts of the film more interesting.

Watch This: A British 70s sex-comedy-farce with a few good set-pieces
Don’t Watch This: People shagging and things falling on them isn’t very funny and there are better satires of the pop industry