American director Randal Kleiser (GREASE, BIG TOP PEE-WEE) journeyed to England to film this gentle comedy adapted by Elizabeth Jane Howard from her own novel.
Jesse Birdsall stars as Gavin Lamb, a 31-year-old West End hairdresser who lives with his parents and is still a virgin, frightened of women. In the course of the film he becomes involved with, and is used and abused by, various members of the sex he fears: the neurotic, sexually profligate Lady
Minerva Munday (Helen Bonham Carter); the adulterous Joan (a priceless Lynn Redgrave) who breaks up the relationship between Gavin's gay best friend, Harry (Richard Huw), and Harry's lover, Winthrop (Kevin Drinkwater); and Jenny (Jane Horrocks), a sweet young woman who works for Gavin, and with
whom he falls in love.
At its heart, GETTING IT RIGHT harbors a sentimentality no different from any number of mundane television programs. Yet Howard's screenplay is so fresh and Kleiser's direction so deft that the film rises above its potentially melodramatic nature. leave a comment