Word: bongos
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...even that sort of absurdity is fading. The beats are gone, man, gone. The bongo drums in Denver's Exodus lie unused and uncared-for. In San Francisco, where it all started, even the Co-Existence Bagel Shop has been closed since autumn. And in Chicago, when a newspaper wanted a "typical" picture of two beats in a coffeehouse, reporters had to comb the city for hours before they found two sad, sandaled shades and dragged them to the Oxford to be shot...
Appearing on a filmed television documentary about teenage rebellion, Bongo gains the approval of A Minister (called just that on a panel program), and the adulation of British youth. His agent tries to tie the two together: "What does our act lack?--Religion;" Bongo treats a massive television audience to his second hit song, "The Madonna on the Second Floor." It is hard to avoid feeling nauseous when his mother turns out to be the Madonna, when you remember that, as the minister has said, "this will contribute to the pleasure of millions of little people...
Unfortunately, one feels even more disgusted at the absurdity of the plot, the shallowness of the characterizations. Lawrence Harvey's agent is the tough, glib guy with a tiny bit of feeling for his mistress. Success corrupts him, he forgets his woman, mistreats Bongo, recites lines that would be rejected by a third-rate television script writer. His mistress raises her voice only twice, and remains loyal...
...secondary love-affair, between Bongo and a middle-aged American singer (Sylvia Sims), manages to show the shallowness of show business in general and the absurdity of this particular film. Miss Sims unwittingly gets Bongo drunk and later acts as both his mother and seducer; at the same time she wrenches his contract from the evil Harvey, plans a grand tour of the United States, and finally shouts at the unfortunate agent: "You get out of here or I'll have you thrown...
...good to see that people are still concerned about mass values, and no doubt Val Guest (who directed the movie) and Wolf Mankowitz (who wrote it) are serious in attempting to deal with an unquestionably important problem. But in Expresso Bongo they are caught in the same mire as their main characters...