Catch Us If You Can (1965)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I remember what a big deal the city of Kenosha made when "A Hard Day's Night" played at the Orpheum downtown theater. "Having a Wild Weekend," on the hand, blew through the area before I had a chance to see it. I think I have watched the movie from start to finish maybe four times in forty years. I like the film but it's no "A Hard Days Night."1) The Beatles were far superior to the Dave Clark Five musically by the time the two movies were released.2) Ringo as a leading character is vastly more enjoyable than Dave Clark's moody Steve. 3) The Beatles played their film for comedy while the Dave Clark Five went for mood.4) The 4 Beatles had distinctive characters while the Dave Clark Five had one leading man and 4 bland supporting actors.5) A hard day's Night moves rapidly while "Having A Wild Weekend" drags much of the time.However, I still like "Having a Wild Weekend." Dinah was a cute little number and Steve had James Bond-like qualities. The costume party scene was a rave. The hippies being rounded up by the British army was a foreshadowing of the near future.

I saw this film in 1965 at a cinema in London when I was almost 16 years old. I always liked the Dave Clarke Five and for a time it looked like they may topple the Beatles as Britains top group. However, the reason this film always sticks in my mind is because I fell head over heels for the leading lady Barbara Ferris. She was the first of only three actresses in all my years of watching movies that I thought I was in love with. Yes my first teenage crush!! The film starts with the theme song CATCH US IF YOU CAN and off we go with Steve a stuntman (Dave) and Dinah a model(Barbara)absconding around London in an E-type Jaguar. There are some great 1960's scenes of London which transports me back in time bringing back memories. Anyway, out of London they mix with some hippies then meet a middle aged couple who live in Bath and eventually end up in Devon. All the time being chased by the rest of DC5 and also by some advertising executives henchmen. This is not a fully lighthearted movie as it has some sombre moments which makes it a little different from the usual pop group films. My favourite scene is when Dave and Barabara are walking and frolicking in the snow (lucky fella)with the haunting love song 'WHEN' being played in the background. Great stuff!!!

Reading the other reviews is like a visit to Private Eye's Pseud's Corner. Come On. As someone who lived through 60s London I can't believe all the hype and drivel spoken about this poorly constructed movie. It's cheap and nasty. The sound is appalling, and yes, despite the other protestations to the contrary, it's merely a poor rip-off of Hard Days Night. It has no style, no panache and sweeping shots of London Traffic Signs is hardly art. Not even worth seeing it through. I thought "Mrs Brown YOu've Got a lovely Daughter" was dire. This is even worse. If it was supposed to be a witty look at the Swinging 60s then it failed miserably. If it was supposed to be avant garden, then who was the intended audience? I'm finding it hard to find anything more to share about this movie. I certainly wouldn't waste any money renting this piece of drivel. We caught it on TV and rather wished we'd not bothered. Save your time. Watch something else

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.