CATCH US IF YOU CAN is a kind of spiritual successor to the Beatles' A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, with John Boorman directing in pseudo-documentary style as he follows the Dave Clark Five on a kind of road trip as they work for an advertising company selling...meat. It doesn't sound very exciting and it really isn't, as the singers don't have really anything in the way of screen presence and their dialogue is constantly stilted and more than a little annoying. The saving grace is the presence of real actors in support, including the likes of Ronald Lacey, Clive Swift and David Lodge, but their roles are eclipsed by the tedium of the main stars.

This follows the footsteps of The Beatles who released A Hard Day's Night a year earlier. This is The Dave Clark 5 having a wild weekend. As early rivals of the Beatles, they are not as charismatic or as successful. As a rock band, they had a good run but can't compare with the cultural earthquake of The Beatles. Few can.

The plot of this is relatively uninspired but that's not the real issue. The guys live together in a flat. Dinah is tired of her shooting a meat commercial and runs away with Steve (Dave Clark) who steals the Jaguar from the lot. They have a crazy adventure.

At the end of the day, Dave Clark is not a big enough personality. I'm not sure if he's even happy to be there. At least, the other guys are trying to be funny. The girl is pretty with good energy. The Beatles were having fun with the camera. Dave's not having fun with the material. This is a fascinating music time capsule and an intriguing comparison study between one icon and one also-ran.

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.