...by which I mean it is incredibly bland given the subject matter. In fact it was the only theatrical feature from a very prolific TV director, and feels like a lethargic endless episode of, say, "Love American Style." I wanted to see it because I figured it couldn't be THAT bad--after all, Lynne Redgrave was a wonderful actor and particularly talented comedienne. But for the most part this isn't even played for comedy, and her Xaviera is just a nice woman with an accent, some funny outfits, and no personality whatsoever. You can't blame Redgrave--the movie has no perspective on its subject, beyond a weird innocuousness, so she seems entirely left to her own devices. And apparently she was only cast a few days before they started filming, so she had no time to prepare for it.
It's a dull enterprise that is neither sexy or funny (let alone dramatic or insightful), and too slick in a televisual way to have a whiff of drive-in sleaze, which it would have actually benefitted from. So it's a film about the decade's most famous sex worker that feels like a PG-rated costume party with a "prostitute" theme that the attendees are too self-conscious even to realize in particularly naughty fashion--this is one of the most CLOTHED movies dominated by women of the decade. I've forgotten which of the other "Happy Hooker" movies I've seen, apart from remembering that they're all bad. But I expected this one to be a little better than the Joey Heatherton and Connie Stevens ones, and while I remember nothing about them, it may actually be the worst of them, just cuz it's so blah.
