Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Starter For 10



Starter for ZZzzz... more like. OK, that didn't really work. Suffice it to say that this film is the precise mid-point of the mediocrity in the middle of the, genreally failry mediocre anyway, British film industry. Actually some of it is bad though. The performances are OK (except for Rebeca Hall for whom I predict good things, or at least a role in a Richard Curtis film at some point. Oh, and Mark Gatiss' comedy Bamber Gascoigne is good too), though the lead is pretty unlikable. The story is faultlessly predicatable (guess what, the blonde one who wants to be famous is not the TRUE LOVE), the soundtrack is faultlessly nostalgic (in a kind of Q/Mojo/Uncut way), the cinematography, editing and direction are all competant. And that's about it for the mediocre.

For the bad: If you're going to set something in Bristol and film some of it there why don't you just film the rest of it there, why film some of it at UCL? Why film scenes of Manchester in Shepherds Bush? Why pretend you can drive from Bristol to Manchester in 2 hours? The tone of the film fluctuates queasily between gritty (well Brassed Off level gritty) scenes of THATCHERS BRITAIN and comedy clowning about. Also I have objections to do with the films ideas about the purpose of education that are too lengthy and dull to go into here and didn't really diminish my limited enjoyment of the film.

Basically whilst it's a decade out, the themes of coming of age, and negotiating British class structure are much better handled in last years TV adaptation The Rotters Club. A comparison that's impossible to avoid making because Alice Eve plays pretty much the same character in both (though the Starter For 10 version is a purely 2D version).

IMDB

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