GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

blanche-2 Laurence Harvey gives an agonizing performance in the agonizing "Expresso Bongo," a British film from 1959.A fast-talking low-life agent, Johnny Jackson (Harvey) discovers a young bongo player/singer (Cliff Richard) from a poor family, renames him Bongo Herbert, and brings him to stardom by wheeling and dealing. Shades of Colonel Parker, especially when he takes half of Bongo's earnings. When the singer meets an American star, Dixie Collins (Yolande Donlan) who is making a triumphant return to London, Jackson starts to lose control of his talent.I have no idea what Laurence Harvey, normally a very fine actor, thought he was doing in his portrayal of Johnny Jackson. He comes off like an imitation of Phil Silvers, except when Phil Silvers did this kind of shtick he was hilarious. He's way, way over the top.I watched this film because I wanted to see the young Cliff Richard. Richard was not in this film enough, nor did he sing enough. The speaking voices of some of the other actors, such as Avis Bonnage as Bongo's mother, and Sylvia Syms as Jackson's girlfriend Maisie) were so annoying and incessantly high pitched and screamy, at one point I nearly stopped watching. Richard himself is very natural, not really acting, and he did well in the musical numbers.Sir Cliff Richard was the U.K.'s answer to Elvis and has more top 10 hits than any other artist, spanning a remarkable 50 years. He has the third-highest number of #1 hits in the UK, behind Elvis and The Beatles. He's an institution. And I hated this movie. Like some of Elvis', it's pretty unwatchable. It's a shame we couldn't do better by our national treasures.

kidboots Apart from a minor role as a delinquent in "Serious Charge", Cliff Richard made a splashy debut as Bert Rudge (a teenage singer, what else) in "Expresso Bongo". It had originally been a successful play on the West End - a biting satire on the music industry. It was voted the Best Musical of the Year. Paul Schofield had the Laurence Harvey part and James Kenney (who had the lead in a pretty nasty J.D. drama, "Cosh Boy") played Bert Rudge. The music was clever and wordy and inspired by song writers like Noel Coward. One song "The Gravy Train", had Shakespearian quotes while in another, "We Bought It", two shopaholics are described as "two eccentric socialites, dissipated sybarites". The play's depiction of Bert Rudge as a talentless idiot obviously had to be changed. Cliff Richard was Britain's latest singing sensation and couldn't be portrayed in that way. So, most of the songs had to go, to be replaced by ones written by Norrie Paramor (who wrote and produced most of Cliff Richard's hit songs).From the beginning, this film is designed to cash in on Cliff Richard's rising fame. The opening credits feature the names of the stars - then Cliff Richards' picture appears on a juke box. The rest of the credits really evoke the sleazy, seedy atmosphere of Soho. Johnny Jackson (Laurence Harvey is absolutely fabulous) is a hustler par excellence, and you are taken on a guided tour as he talks and hustles his way around the coffee clubs. Maisie (a fantastic performance by Sylvia Sims) drags him to a "beat club" where he finds singer and bongo player, Bert Rudge, and proceeds to build him into the latest singing sensation - as "Bongo" Herbert. Johnny is also Maisie's manager, but so far he hasn't been able to lift her out of the sleazy strip club, where she is a featured performer. She has a secret ambition - she wants to be an opera singer!! "Bongo" is taken under the wing of Dixie Collins, an almost over the hill singer, who genuinely wants to help him but is bitter when he is given a singing engagement instead of her.The film really slows down when Harvey takes a back seat in the last half - Cliff Richard, at this stage in his career, just didn't have the talent or charisma to hold viewers interest. Susan Hampshire, who was in the West End production of the play, may have "played the upper class twit to a T" (as one reviewer says) but she was a much beloved British actress who was Queen of Classic British TV. I can first remember seeing her in the television series "Katy" (1962), based on the "What Katy Did" series of books. She even made another film with Cliff Richard, "Wonderful Life" (1964) but the series that started the television ball rolling for her was "The Forsythe Saga", in which she played Soames' spoilt, willful daughter Fleur. After that it was almost as if she was forbidden to come into the 20th century with shows like "Vanity Fair", "David Copperfield", "The Pallisers" and "The Barchester Chronicles".Recommended.

bkoganbing It's been said that Cliff Richard was the UK's equivalent of Elvis Presley. Personally I saw a lot more Ricky Nelson or Frankie Avalon in his musical style. Nevertheless he was and does remain a very big singing star in the British Commonwealth countries though he never was able to make it the USA market as the Beatles who symbolize the next generation of pop stars.He plays what he is a young musical hopeful who gets discovered by Laurence Harvey, a fast talking British cockney version of Sammy Glick. Harvey gives a nice performance here though he's almost as 'on' all the time as Phil Silvers. Sylvia Sims is Harvey's patient girl friend who works as a stripper in a Soho club and Yolande Donlon who was an American expatriate in London plays an American musical comedy star who takes a far more than motherly interest in young Richard. Donlon manages to best Harvey, but the man does come out of the battle none the worst for wear.Expresso Bongo is a realistic look at the British music industry at the beginning of the sixties. Richard sings a couple of songs and does them well in the manner of Ricky Nelson.Best scene in the film when Harvey gets on a panel discussion show with a minister and psychologist about today's youth and their musical taste. Those two and the moderator were certainly not expecting the shtick Harvey gave them. Worth seeing for that alone.

rayshaw44 Harvey's performance is akin to Cary Grant in His girl Friday which I term "Cary Grant unleashed" Like Grant, Harvey takes his character and far from overacting rather sets the screen on fire. As for the movie itself,it lags when Harvey is not on the screen and it needs another actress in the Dixie roll who can somehow match Harvey. Dixie drags down the last third of the film. For the legions who deem Harvey's career as a series of zombie-like performances, Bongo turns that opinion on it's ear. Cliff Richard does a good job in his first screen roll. Beware of the current DVD release. It does not have several musical numbers and this greatly mars the movie.