FILM REVIEW

Boeing Boeing.  A new release of the 1960s sex comedy which started as a stage play by Camoletti and Cross. I wonder who they were. The plot features the adventures of two wide boy atheistic scientists Richard Dawkins and Fred Hoyle amidst the backdrop of swinging London. There are various charming misunderstandings as the young men while away the time, Richard popping in to junkyards in the hope that a 747 Jumbo Jet may be about to appear spontaneously after a windstorm and Fred peering through telescopes in the expectation that aliens are about to land to check up on the human race which they had earlier seeded on earth. A frisson of dramatic tension is added by the two atheists fundamental disagreement on the origin of life. Richard thinks it just happened. Fred thinks the aliens dunnit. I kid you not. There's an intriguing side plot when Richard starts dating that cracking Lalla Ward bird from Doctor Who (She played the warrior woman Leela.) while conspiring with script writers at the BBC to atheise the British populace through the manipulation of scripts for this and other science fiction programmes of the period. Boeing Boeing ends on an upbeat note with Leela marrying Richard and with Fred marrying a Jumbo Jet. From what I remember of Doctor Who, Richard got the better part of that deal. Of interest to cultural historians is the fact that in an Irish production of the original stage play I myself filled the role of one of the wide boy scientists sharing the stage with well known real life Irish criminal defence lawyer Conal Boyce as the other. Although to be fair, he didn't really share. By the way, Conal Boyce is a criminal defence lawyer in the sense that he defends criminals (They all did it.) not in the sense that he is defending them by criminal means. Although. But no. Leave it.