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Review: 'Swinging With The Finkels' A Conservative Sex Comedy With Less Laughs Than That Implies

By Gabe Toro
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August 23, 2011 6:10 AM
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1 Comment

There’s no way around this, there’s no kind way to preface this, there’s no purpose to side-step it: “Swinging With The Finkels” is one of the worst, cheapest, dumbest and most dishonest films of the year. The film has the same tin-ear for its material that student films usually sport, often when they’re about retirement, hitmen, or a litany of subjects young people tackle despite clearly having no experience in the field. 'Swinging,' in theory, would be a film oblivious to the matters of sex and intimacy, but, in fact, it’s merely alien to any and all human behavior. The only 2011 film with this level of understanding regarding our basic humanity was Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch,” but at least that picture has the fallback of a heightened science fiction story.

By Sam Price
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August 9, 2011 1:41 AM
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3 Comments

Though it’s the birthplace of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, and boasts masters such as Mike Leigh and Ken Loach still working at the top of their game, there’s also a rich tradition in British cinema of what one could politely call the “sex comedy”. It began with the light smattering of smut provided by the “Confessions...” series of the 1970s and evolved into the slap-and-tickle blarney of the “Carry On…” movies. In the 2000s, we thought it’d reached the summit of what the fetid sub-genre could achieve with the risible “Sex Lives of the Potato Men,” “Lesbian Vampire Killers, ” and “Three And Out”. But now we have Jonathan Newman’s “Swinging With the Finkels,” the trailer for which promises the less-than-edifying spectacle of Jerry Stiller getting hit in the crotch with a vibrator.