Cinema
Mix Me a Drink
By ISABEL QUICLY
Mix Me a Person. (Columbia.) Now, as they say, I've seen everything: Adam Faith Plar ing his guitar in the cne' demned cell. It added just the • last straw of frivolity to a 011 that beats even the recent Re' prieve in the silliest-film-01: capital-punishment stakes. r1 Mix Me a Person (director: Leslie Norman, 'X certificate) is about a nineteen-year-old ht1)( found in a dark lane with a dead policeman at his feet, a more-or-less smoking gun in hi5 hand, and a stolen car in the offing. The con' trivances needed to establish his innocence at so excruciatingly absurd that at first one giggle,s.' then smiles get thinner, and the unmistakah' sound of a dissatisfied mass starts breaking through the film's noises. There's a good guff° near the end, when the heroine's locked in a deer freeze the size of a cathedral and, at twelve le°, gress below zero in evening dress, flutters aroune the flying buttresses of brussels sprouts. The" combined yawns of relief and anti-climax when the hero predictably gets back to his coffee-bar' The one thing faintly interesting about it and this only seems like a gimmick, a ilitl1P °h1,1. the bandwagon of fairly recent opinion—is fact that the British police aren't .shown in rItnIe their usual wonderful light. The boy gets scirft pointless cuffs and punches when they srr'',A him; they suppress relevant evidence and cow" almost be accused of cooking some of the Os; The condemned cell procedure has a fe f moments of cold realism that kindle a hit of the horror they're after. Interesting, too, g13 the audience's reaction to this sort of herelie: nervous titters, squeals of alarm and pleastill'id disbelief. Nothing else of interest, though, possibly be squeezed from this lamentable fil't"6 which, on teenagers especially, has every clice, in the book. Asked if the youngsters were 'rePro sentative,' even Mr. Faith hedged.Teena,g,e0.1 vary so, he said: not that you'd think it, It" our current crop of teenage films.
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