Reviews & Ratings for
Seaside Swingers More at IMDbPro »Every Day's a Holiday (original title)

5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
The Fabulous Baker Girls, 28 February 2006

Author: RDenial from Detroit

This is not a great film and is badly dated. I gave it a 10 anyways based solely on seeing Jennifer and Susan Baker sing the song "Romeo Jones". I had not seen this film since the 60s yet this scene popped into my head recently as I recalled having a huge crush on these twin sisters when I was a kid. I had not thought of this in years and tracked down a copy of the film on eBay. The performance was as wonderful as I remembered and I still have a crush on these girls. They only were in a handful of films but they are completely adorable. I find it hard to believe that they were not in more films or offered a record contract. There is not much info on the web on the twins so I have no idea what paths their lives took after they quit making films. The rest of the cast is more than capable with John Leyton (the Great Escape), Ron Moody (Oliver) and Michael Ripper (Every Hammer film ever made), and do the best they can with a substandard script. There is a couple of bizarre performances by Freddie and the Dreamers and a busty Liz Fraser to liven things up, but the real attraction for me is the Baker Twins. Their performance so impressed me when I was 10 years old that it remained in my head for over 40 years. I am just glad that it worked it's way out of my subconscious mind so I could enjoy it all over again.

5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Another example of a good 'bad' film., 17 February 2005

Author: Scaramouche2004 from Coventry, England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I have given this picture six stars, rather out of sentiment than as an actual rating of this film.

Years ago, this film was a personal favourite of my sister and her best friend and through them, my brother and I also became quite hooked. The film was only about twenty years old then (if that) and still therefore looked rather hip and trendy in my eyes. We thought the characters were hilarious, the songs catchy and the dances amazing.

However after years of being lost in the obscurity of a growing mind, I was recently presented with a copy and I couldn't wait to load it into the now almost redundant VCR and relive this page of my youth.

Regrettably I learnt a hard lesson from this. Sometimes it is best for your past to remain where it is, and be remembered for what it was...it shouldn't be relived.

If the British film industry has one failing then it is musicals. We make great war films, love stories, Romantic comedies...need I mention the greatness of the Ealing comedies of the fifties and the subsequent Carry On's...amazing.

But when it comes to musicals...forget it....We are hopeless.

I still like the songs, I still find the characters amusing, but as for the plot and those almost cringe worthy dance numbers, I am afraid it has left me questioning my youth...Was it mis-spent? Why did I like this film so much? A musical number would just spring up out of nowhere, bearing no relation to the story being told, and I cannot stress too strongly that when it comes to the dance numbers.....well certain viewers may find certain scenes distressing.

But still, once again a product of its time...the swinging sixties.

Every single song in here is worthy of praise and merit and are sung beautifully by John 'Great Escape' Leyton, Mike 'Come Outside' Sarne and team, with I think the best performances coming from The Baker Twins' singing Romeo Jones and of course Freddie and the Dreamers, one act I personally thought were better than the Beatles and who signified youthful innocence and exuberance in a world rapidly going mad and psychedelic. A world and genre that was eventually to swallow them without trace.

Despite all these negative remarks, it is a good film and a bad film in one. Believe me it is possible...some films like this one, cannot be taken too seriously, so we love them for what they are despite the fact that they are on the whole dreadful.

It had been twenty years or probably even more since I last saw this film, now I have seen it again, it will probably be twenty more, but it was fun to look back...albeit with a due sense of disappointment...it just wasn't the same somehow.

I guess it appeals more to the 10/11 year old me, than it does the mature thirty something, I am now.

5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Soak yourself in British Invasion Style!, 7 May 2003
Author: Paul Thorne from USA

This is cross between Hard Day's Night and Summer Holiday which does nothing to threaten the dominance of either in the British 60's rock 'n' romance genre. I'll let others explain the finer points of casting and score. What I find so fascinating about "Seaside Swingers" is the bewildered holiday camp extras who thought they were going to have an uneventful and typically overcast two weeks at one of Butlin's more drab properties and ended up unwitting props in a third rate musical comedy about some rather aged looked teenagers trying to make a splash in the prepubescent world of rock 'n' roll.

The holiday camp must be seen to be believed. Americans will find it unbelievable that people actually spent the only two weeks they got each year going to what amounted to an overcrowded compound where the only entertainment was guessing how far apart the family would have to sit from each other in the "canteen" or large feeding area (which features prominantly in this film). The chalets referred to by the campers were extremely small motel-style rooms which were your base of operations at the camp.

For a real soak in the British invasion style this is just the ticket but fast forward through the "Crazy Horse Saloon" number. It's atrocious.

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Dated but very "sixties", 12 June 2006

Author: Sylvester from Surrey, England

Despite the hype at the time of its release, this musical offering was never particularly good and, if you are expecting to hear any classic sixties tracks, then go and buy a CD. For the most part the music consists of numbers which you would be disappointed to find on the 'B' side of a single. The dancing is similarly uninspired - the usual (for the time) jumping up and down and from side to side with arms outstretched, rather like a manic aerobics session. The love triangle and older versus younger generation plot is simplistic. The acting is variable with stalwarts such as Ron Moody, Liz Fraser and Michael Ripper there to balance the less able pop artistes. However, as a piece of sixties nostalgia,particularly with its holiday camp setting, the film is well worth a look and Freddie and the Dreamers are always value for money.

2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
A Fairly Typical Mersey-Beat Era Musical, 21 April 2000
Author: Brainy-2 from Los Angeles, California

A feather-light musical comedy involving a group of college kids who enter a talent contest at a summer resort. Grazina Frame sings a catchy song called "1st time bitten, 2nd time shy," the Baker twins sing a fluffy piece of nonsense called "Romeo Jones," and Freddie & The Dreamers make an appearance singing "Don't do that to me." Anyone who enjoyed sitting through the likes of "Having a wild weekend" and "Ferry cross the mersey" should enjoy this one as well.

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
It is so cheesy, It's brilliant, 7 October 2004
Author: BeauDandy75 (BeauDandy75@aol.com)

It's a rags to riches tale of 3 guys & 4 gals who meet while working at a holiday camp and end up entering and winning the annual talent contest. Everything moves along rather too quickly - the plot where Gerry (John Leyton) falls for the girl, loses the girl to Tim (Mike Sarne) and then is reunited with her happens in an instant and the fact that the group, The Lucky Seven, beats Freddie & the Dreamers in the contest is a bit too unbelievable and smacks of a touch of vote rigging. Still ... on the whole it is a very entertaining film.

The songs are a bit corny but feel-good - the best being the gorgeous Baker Twins' "Romeo Jones" and the title song (although some of the lyrics should have been revised as they don't quite fit in with the music). I would also have to say that the serenade by Tim to Christina ("Indubitably Me") is incredibly catchy.

I first saw this movie around the end of the 70s and have to admit that my sister and I used to watch it on tape at least once a day. I was gutted when someone taped over it but am happy to say I have a new copy.

The film was re released in the early 80s as 'The Adventures of Tim' which is not surprising as, although Sarne's Character isn't really supposed to be the main one, he is hilarious throughout and steals every scene he is in.

If you want a film to cheer you up on a wet Saturday morning - you could do a lot worse than this one.

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Overlooked, undervalued and highly recommended, 14 April 2001

Author: hernebay (franz.schmidt@btinternet.com)

Other than the justly celebrated films of Cliff Richard and The Beatles, British pop musicals of the early 60s are not highly esteemed. They are generally seen as having been blatantly derivative at the time and hopelessly dated now. If "Summer Holiday" and "A Hard Day's Night" represent the very best of this somewhat narrow genre it is likely that "Every Day's A Holiday" would be considered - if at all - as one of the very minor also-rans. Having watched a recent repeat of this film, however, I found it highly entertaining. In essence it is a Cliff Richard film without Cliff, who is replaced, insofar as he can be, by John Leyton, a young actor-turned-pop star (and sometime Joe Meek protege). As in the Cliff films, the musical numbers are strung along a purposely lightweight romantic plotline, and both Ron Moody and Richard O'Sullivan are held over from the Cliff entourage. The cinematography, courtesy of a young Nic Roeg, makes this film a pleasure to watch, and the musical numbers, if undistinguished by the high standards of The Beatles and Cliff, are enjoyable. As in so many films of this period, the choreography - performed by an accomplished dance-troupe - betrays the unmistakable influence of "West Side Story". The likeable cast includes Mike Sarne, Grazina Frame, Liz Fraser, Nicholas Parsons, the late Michael Ripper and the late Hazel Hughes. Sarne (improbably but effectively cast as a young aristocrat-about-town, Tim) vies with the decently working-class Gerry (Leyton) for the attentions of the no less high-born Christina (Frame). Disappointingly for sociologically-minded film buffs there is only the most superficial investigation of the class issues inherent in the situation, but, of course, this is entirely as it should be in an escapist entertainment of this sort. (Indeed, in the naively optimistic mood of the mid-60s, class was starting to be perceived as not especially problematic, with an overall youth culture transcending such ancient barriers.) Unlike Gerry, who is hopelessly smitten, the vain and self-regarding (but strangely appealing) Tim casts his romantic net rather more widely, notably demonstrating - albeit with somewhat qualified success! - the "beatnik approach" to wooing. His dalliance with holiday camp manager Mr Close's (Charles Lloyd Pack) ripely sexy secretary Miss Slightly (Liz Fraser) prospers somewhat better, given her enthusiasm for sex (made evident early in the film), and her equally evident eventual inebriation. Indeed, in its rather innocent way, "Every Day's A Holiday" is pre-occupied with sex (as distinct from chaste romance) to a far greater degree than most of the youth films of the time; certainly far more than the Cliff films that it otherwise resembles. Most noteworthy among its various set pieces is a mind-bogglingly brilliant and surreal sequence featuring Freddie and the Dreamers as chefs. Nicholas Parsons plays a pretentious and overwrought TV director, first cousin, so to speak, to Victor Spinetti in "A Hard Day's Night", although from internal evidence (an allusion to Harold Macmillan during a bingo game), "Every Day's A Holiday" would seem to be the earlier of the two films. In addition to the "in-house" performers and Freddie and the Dreamers, there is a fleeting appearance by The Mojos. Despite the presence of these two bands, however, the ethos of the film is more Cliff/Shadows/Meek than Merseybeat. Highly recommended.

Add another review

Related Links