Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

British rock band the Dave Clark Five gets to do its own version of A Hard Day's Night with Having A Wild Weekend. The film is replete with many of their well known hits of the day just as the Beatles' classic.Front man Dave Clark works as a stuntman and the other members of the group are his flat mates. They have quite a pad too. While working on a commercial model Barbara Ferris who has become the British symbol via the ad campaign for meat just gets tired of it and she and Clark decide to just split for a bit.Nothing more to tell other than this was the first feature film directed by John Boorman who would go on to do many more hit films including a favorite of mine Zardoz. Fans of the group you will love this as much as Fab Four fans love A Hard Day's Night.

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.

When I was a kid, this is the movie I remember seeing in the theater. I never got to see the Beatles "Hard Day's Night" on the big screen. That being said, I thought this was a better movie than some other films I saw at that age. It was definitely better than the typical beach movies the US was producing with Leslie Gore singing "Sunshine, Lolipops".While I never saw the Beatles film then, once I did, I don't understand the comparison. "Hard Days Night" was about The Beatles trying to escape their rabid fans. The DC5 film here is more about having a wild week-end and trying to get away from the cops.The theme song, "Catch Us If You Can" caught on big in the US as it went up the pop charts. I remember at one time owning the soundtrack vinyl album of this move, along with earlier stuff like "Glad All Over" and "Because".This movie did pretty well in the US but the DC5 then seemed to run out of a stream of music here trying to compete with the Beatles and Roliing Stones. Then in 1966 the Pre-Fab 4, The Monkees hit the charts.To me the most inspired moments in this are the costume party. It presents some pretty good light comedy. You can tell this is a British film because there are some scenes of Barbara Ferris at camera angles the codes in the US did not allow then. She looks and acts well in this film.

More road movie than rock movie, CATCH has a surprisingly mature, melancholy tone for a British beat picture. That it has any tone at all is a tribute to director Boorman, whose characteristic fusion of the mythic with the ordinary is already evident in this his first movie, and writer Peter Nichols, who imbues the surprisingly engaging supporting characters with a quality of personal yearning and need for escape that spans generations. Boorman's preoccupation with water, rigorous yet dreamlike use of landscape and tendency to celebrate or at least acknowledge the antiquated are just as vivid here as they are in HOPE AND GLORY. Too detailed and ambling to be anything but opaque or irrelevant on video, I suspect.