Whatever Happened To Harold Smith?

I recently talked about trailers and spoilers and the dream of going to see a movie, walking into the theatre knowing nothing of what I was about to experience. It has actually happened once in my life. 

Back in 1999 we were all still fretting over Y2K and I was in my second year in University College Cork. I had been going home at the weekends during my first year, but now I was starting to spend more time in Cork, hanging out with friends at the weekends.

One dark and cold Friday evening in November, the gang we all going to the cinema. A new movie had just come out and they were excited to see it. I tagged along out of curiosity. I went in knowing nothing. Like, absolutely nothing at all. Not an actor, not a setting, not even the overall genre. I don’t even know if I saw the poster while I was in the cinema that night. I suspect that my friends engineered it so I wouldn’t see the poster after discovering I was so ignorant to everything else at this point. 

The movie is called “Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?” Don’t feel bad if you don’t recognize it. Looking it up to help write this, it’s not going to make anyone’s “100 movies you must see before you die”. 

But I loved it!! I howled with laughter throughout. Every little twist and turn, every cameo, every sight gag and stupid pun was all new to me. It holds a very special place in my heart, though, to be totally honest, I haven’t seen it since. I don’t think it’s streaming anywhere, and I never saw it advertised on TV, even in the years after it’s release. 

If you can, maybe watch it. Don’t look up any trailers or cast list or plot synopsis. It’s a strange beast, but it’s a funny one. 

And with that, you already know more than I did 22 years ago.