Barmy in the Back Stacks

Only Two Can Play (Kingsley International). Bangalangalang! It's the Mickey Mouse alarm clock. 6:30. Dad (Peter Sellers) slaps it off, rolls over, inspects the soft female back turned toward him.

Should he? "Maaaaaaaaaa!" It's the baby.

Dad ducks under the covers. Mum (Virginia Maskell) staggers up, eyes like bruises, hair like last year's alfalfa. Puts the baby on the pot, the water on the stove. Dad sinks blissfully into stolen snooze. "Wake up!" squeals his darling daughter, knocking on his head with her knuckles--hard. "Ah, c'mon!" Mum squalls at the baby. "Yer not tryin'." Dad weaves toward the bathroom, battles an ancient geyser for five minutes, achieves a pathetic dribble of tepid water, starts to shave. "Breakfast!" Dad slumps groggily over his coffee. "Now don't be late, dear." Dad rises wearily, kisses his daughter goodbye. She draws back as if from a leper. "You've got bad breath!" Is it any wonder that Dad, a librarian somewhere in Wales, goes barmy in the back stacks with the first pretty woman (Mai Zetterling) who evinces interest in one of his favorite volumes, Concise History of Codpieces? One moonless night she takes him out for a spin, but just as Dad is about to make out, a cow sticks its head in the car window and says naaaah. She invites him home when her husband is away, but unexpectedly the husband returns--accompanied by several members of the library committee.

Sex, one gathers, is both rationed and ridiculous in the welfare state, and so, apparently, are plots. Nevertheless, the profligate is not without honor in Britain; Only Two Can Play is currently breaking box-office records there. Its success is understandable. Based on a bestselling novel (That Uncertain Feeling) by Kingsley Amis, the script releases plenty of low-pressure fizz and an occasional slow leak of wit ("I was plowing through your novel the other day," the hero murmurs sweetly to an author he detests. "We have an unsigned first edition--they're the rare ones, aren't they?"). But what matters most is Comedian Sellers. He is perfectly hilarious as the lubricious bookworm, the wan don who thinks he is a Don Juan.

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