The Love Ban

is a 1973 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Hywel Bennett, Nanette Newman and Milo O'Shea.

Laffan was one of 14 children from a devout Roman Catholic family and his critical view on the Church's stance on birth control was a recurring theme of his work.

The halting screenplay and Ralph Thomas' torpid, direction have drained the life out of Kevin Laffan's popular stage play, and no amount of back-up (Christmas for sentimentalists, John Cleese for sophisticates) can disguise the fact.

The film is also insultingly ambivalent, smugly sticking up (as Mr. Thomas, might have put it) for women's lib with its central message, while at the same time offering cheap thrills and easy laughs on the side by filling the screen with capering nudes and demonstrating the apocryphal incompetence of all lady drivers.

Of the ill-used cast, only the admirable Nanette Newman manages on occasion to make one believe that the script has, underneath all the tired innuendo, something seriously funny to say.