Play It Cool (1962)

Excellent but underrated film

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Michael Winner might well have felt like insuring his nascent directing career when he received the script for this pop exploitation flick. Feebly constructed as a vehicle for Billy Fury, the agenda underlying Play it Cool is painfully obvious from the outset – Fury was being groomed as a British Elvis and the movie career was just one more box to be ticked. There's no doubt he had the looks and the voice, if not, perhaps, songs of sufficiently high quality (there's only one truly memorable number on offer here). He just can't act. Not even a little, little bit. Fury fans should simply skip the plot and go straight to the musical numbers. Sorry, did I say 'plot'? My mistake.Fury's acting skills may be wanting, but worse by far is the sight of British comedy stalwart Richard Wattis mugging it up as Billy's ever-so-slightly camp manager. Good fortune intervenes and removes Wattis' utterly resistible character from the plot after about twenty minutes. By coincidence, that's the point at which the storyline seizes up. Ah yes, the storyline. That needn't detain us long. Fury (as the plausibly-named Billy Universe) and his band are en route to a pop music contest in Europe. They get no further than the airport where they become involved in some lightweight shenanigans involving an heiress who's aiming to give daddy (Dennis Price) the slip and marry no-good pop louse Larry Grainger (Maurice Kaufmann). That's about the sum of it. From Gatwick Airport, our heroes decamp to a barely recognisable Soho where begins an interminable run of sequences as Fury and co pursue Grainger through various nightclubs – a thinly disguised excuse for some mimed performances by the likes of Helen Shapiro, Shane Fenton and Bobby (Rubber Ball) Vee. And of course, Fury himself, whose best moments are when he's in his rock 'n' roll comfort zone. Badly executed though it may be, it's hard to cultivate any genuine dislike for this movie as it's all so well-intentioned, and Fury fans will rightly appreciate it as the best surviving film document of a true British rock and roll icon.

one of if not the best music movie's to come out of 60s Britain, staring billy fury who's amazing good looks made the film even more worth watching, billy's acting is on top form and his voice is better then ever.in fact i give it 10 out of 10, a must watch film for any fan of 60s music.the story is non stop action and songs that keep the viewer glued to the screen, nice cameo roles from bobby Vee and helen shapiro. and also shane fenton who later became alvin stardust, well worth viewing is billy's other movie I've gotta horse which was made in 1965 and also that'll be the day where billy has a cameo role as stormy tempest a singer at a holiday camp.all in all i think the music industry would have been a lot worse off without the talents of billy fury

This early effort from Michael Winner should have been much better than it is. Like other films from the period it showcases popular music artistes and tries to give them something more to do than just sing their songs. So here, Billy Fury as 'Billy Universe' is supposed to be acting, and he's hopeless. I'm not saying he was a poor singer but he was certainly a poor actor.The guest appearances range from the curious (Bobby Vee, the man with a totally square-shaped head!), to the out-of-place (Helen Shapiro, far too good even as a kid for this rubbish), to the seriously scary (was there ever really a reason to inflict Lionel Blair on the cinema-going public?). Watching it all the way through takes some patience and there isn't really enough to it to interest a wider audience.

With 1962 being a strange time for rock 'n' roll in both America and England, it's a wonder that "Play It Cool" is as entertaining as it is. British rock star Billy Fury plays an Elvis wannabee named Billy Universe who curls his lip and moans just like his hero, but exaggerates his hand movements to the point where he looks like a spastic Bobby Darin. When Billy and his wacky band members get stranded in London with an heiress who's looking for her no-good boyfriend, they make the rounds of the city's pubs and clubs, stumbling upon a place where a trio is singing the squarest music imaginable, then heading on to a spot called The Twist where everybody's twisting (the latest dance craze when "Play It Cool" was being filmed, but stone dead by the time the film was released), then dropping in on a Chinese-themed restaurant called the Lotus Club where pop star Helen Shapiro is crooning in front of a phalanx of violinists. A visit to another club finds American teen idol Bobby Vee (who began his career as a Buddy Holly sound-alike) spooning drivel in front of another bank of violins. Through it all, Billy Fury gets to sing a handful of songs, including a sappy ballad, a twist, an uptempo number called "I Think You're Swell" and a fairly good rocker called "Play It Cool." In other words, this movie is musically all over the place, because the producers were trying to please everybody at a time when the music was rapidly changing. To bind all the musical interludes together, there are lots of little subplots and shots of Billy and his boys running through Gatwick Airport and Houston Station (more than a year before the Beatles did the same thing in "A Hard Day's Night"), but in the end it doesn't add up to much simply because the music is so uniformly unmemorable. Billy Fury is a sympathetic presence, but perhaps the most intriguing artist in "Play It Cool," at least for Americans, is teenage star Helen Shapiro, who sings two numbers, including one of her singles, "I Don't Care." America never really had anything like this bouffant contralto, unless you combine Annette Funicello with the foghorn voice of Timi Yuro. Helen is one of the most awkward performers I've ever seen (more so here than in her film debut, "It's Trad, Dad"), and yet I couldn't take my eyes off her strange beauty. Her career was fading fast by the time she appeared in "Play It Cool," but she's probably the best reason to watch it.