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the audience applauded

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This movie reminded me a lot of my own student times. I could very much relate to the main character, Brian, even though I studied in the 2000s and I am female. James McAvoy perfectly shows the curiosity, insecurity and naivety many feel when they first move out from home and study at university. You can see how Brian is torn between trying to fit in (going to parties where he knows no one, smoking pot), but also how he pursues the things he likes, no matter if others think he is cool (making it to a TV quiz show and being the most eager student in his favourite class). Brian could very well be the guy living next door in your student house, and probably you would become friends with him. Many of us will be able to remember scenes of our own student life depicted in this movie: feeling lost on a party, constantly sipping from your glass to keep yourself busy and trying hard to have a casual conversation with complete strangers; how your mother keeps asking you if you packed everything you need for the weekend and you don't know how to explain her that you're not a child any more ("Do you have towels? Yes? Then at least take some ham with you..."); or when you can't believe your luck because you see that the girl or boy you really like is interested in you as well. This movie just feels very real. My favourite scenes were those of the first kiss(es), full of anxiety, and played more realistically than in most movies I've seen. And the awkwardly misunderstood quote from "the graduate". The credit goes to James McAvoy who is perfectly believable as a first- year student and keeps this movie together even in its weaker scenes. He is supported by a strong cast, especially his two love interests and the leader of the university quiz team. Unfortunately, in its last 20 minutes (which is when the actual climax was supposed to take place, during the quiz show) the movie feels a bit rushed, becomes predictable and some scenes are a bit too much (e.g. how Cumberbatch looks... you'll know what I mean when you'll see it). It also takes the easy (and safe) way out in the final scenes. I give this movie 7 stars out of 10. If it wasn't for the last 20 minutes, I would have given it 9 stars. As it is, this is still a very entertaining and excellently acted movie which you will certainly enjoy watching.

From what I knew or presumed about the potential plot line and the cast involved, I was certainly going to give this very British film a go. Basically it is 1985, during the Thatcherism era, Brian Jackson (James McAvoy) from Essex has enrolled in the Bristol University with a love of knowledge, since childhood where he would watch college quiz show "University Challenge". He hears about a Challenege team trying to get on the TV show, and there he meets and is smitten by lovely blonde with a big sexual past Alice Harbinson (Alice Eve). He manages to hurt the feelings of Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall), but he has to try and concentrate for the Challenge finale coming up, and he with fellow teammates Patrick Watts (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Lucy Chang (Elaine Tan). So it comes to the quiz show recording, and even with cuts and bruises on their faces (a disagreement), they are determined to beat the other team playing. They start slow, but do catch up with more correct answers, it is only when Brian answers the final question before it was asked - because he looked at the question book before the game started - that he ruins the whole thing. Also starring Catherine Tate as Julie Jackson, Mamma Mia's Dominic Cooper as Spencer, James Corden as Tone, Mark Gatiss as Bamber Gascoigne, Charles Dance as Michael Harbinson, Lindsay Duncan as Rose Harbinson and Simon Woods as Josh. If you are British, you will of course appreciate the good performances, but more than anything you will enjoy the distinctive nostalgia and warmth the humour this British film provides, a good old-fashioned period romantic comedy drama. Very good!

"Starter for 10" is a charming coming-of-age comedy set in the Thatcher-era Britain of the mid 1980s. Brian Jackson ("Atonement"'s James McAvoy) is a brainy lad with an insatiable appetite for facts who leaves his home in Essex to attend university in Bristol. Almost immediately, he becomes a member of the school's academic quiz team, falls madly in love with his drop-dead gorgeous teammate, Alice, and catches the eye of an earthy social crusader by the name of Rebecca. Meanwhile, the team prepares for a trivia bowl competition to be broadcast on nationwide TV.Adapted by David Nicholls from his novel and directed by Tom Vaughan, "Starter for 10" has all the drollery, dryness and wit we've come to expect from the best of British humor. McAvoy exudes a great deal of charisma as the intelligent young man who finds that shedding his lower-class origins and proving his smarts in a university setting is not going to be quite as easy as he thought it would be; and Dominic Cooper, Rebecca Epstein, Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch match him in likability and appeal. The movie also playfully captures the sights and sounds of the era in which it is set, with crowds of placard-waving young people dressed in "Flashdance" and New Wave-inspired attire protesting everything from apartheid to pollution to nuclear proliferation while synthesizer-laden music pounds away in the background.But it is as a hilarious and insightful human comedy that the film earns our real attention and affection. And that '80s-infused soundtrack (featuring The Cure and The Psychedelic Furs, among others) may just be the inspiration you need to finally ferret out those long-discarded leg warmers and head bands from the back of your closet.

"University Challenge" is a long-running quiz show on British television, featuring contests between teams from different universities. The title of this film is taken from the catch phrase "your starter for ten…..", much used by the programme's original presenter, Bamber Gascoigne. I have an interest to declare as in the early eighties I myself appeared on the programme as a member of the team from Magdalene College, Cambridge. I am also familiar with Bristol University as, during the mid-eighties (the film is set in 1985/6), my then girlfriend Melissa was a student there.There has been a long literary tradition in Britain of novels about university life, although this has not always been reflected by the British cinema. There seem to be more films set in public schools; "Goodbye Mr Chips", "The Guinea Pig", "If….." and the two "Browning Versions" are all examples. The opening scenes of "Chariots of Fire" were set in Cambridge and those of the recent "Brideshead Revisited" in Oxford, although in neither case is academic life the real subject of the film. "Starter for Ten" is one of the few British films ("Lucky Jim" is another) to take university life as its main subject matter. (The subject has been much more extensively treated in American films).In form the film is a romantic comedy. The main character is Brian Jackson, a working-class boy from Clacton (a seaside resort in Essex) who wins a place at the prestigious Bristol University. From his childhood Brian has had a passion for knowledge and learning for its own sake, and this earns him a slot on Bristol's "University Challenge" team. The romance element is provided by the two girls in Brian's life, Alice and Rebecca, who have very different personalities. The blonde Alice (a fellow-member of the quiz team) is sexy and glamorous but also shallow and fickle and wildly promiscuous. Or at least she claims to be wildly promiscuous; there is perhaps a hint that her stories of having slept with just about every man who has ever crossed her path were invented to impress the easily-impressed Brian. The brunette Rebecca is less obviously glamorous (although the actress who plays her is in fact very attractive) but more sincere and genuine than Alice; like Brian, she has an interest in left-wing politics.Politics, in fact, play an important role in this film. Brian and Rebecca are seen demonstrating in favour of various fashionable eighties causes (anti-apartheid, nuclear disarmament, etc.), but even more important are the politics of social class. The working-class Brian often feels out of his depth among the more affluent students at Bristol such as Alice and Patrick, the captain of the quiz team who is played as a stuffy, pompous snob. Brian feels the need to remain in touch with his proletarian roots, especially his old school friend, Spencer, who cautions him not to become a "w*nker", by which he presumably means someone like Patrick. This, however, was one of the weakest aspects of the film. It is Spencer who is the real w*nker- an unpleasant and dishonest character, who sleeps with his mate's girlfriend and shamelessly confesses to benefit fraud and embezzling from his employer. Indeed, in the first scene in which he appears he throws a tape belonging to another boy into the sea, for no reason other than sheer devilment. I therefore found it rather disquieting, and patronising to all those who had to struggle with the problem of being unemployed during the eighties, that the scriptwriters seemed to treat Spencer as a working-class hero and the voice of Brian's social conscience.Some of the characters- Alice, Spencer and above all Patrick- were rather clichéd and one-dimensional, but James McAvoy was good as Brian, an engaging and very believable mixture of intellectual precocity and naivety, even though, at twenty-seven, he seemed physically too mature to be playing an eighteen-year-old. This was not, however, his best performance- that must be either "Atonement" or "The Last King of Scotland". The comedienne Catherine Tate gave a nicely judged performance as Brian's widowed mother and Rebecca Hall made Rebecca a likable heroine, even though she was a bit too intense for my tastes. Mark Gatiss gave a pitch-perfect imitation of Bamber Gascoigne, even though in real life there is no physical resemblance between them. There were some very comic moments, especially Brian's disastrous visit to Alice and her seriously weird parents, the sort of people who walk round naked in front of guests but can be surprisingly uptight in other ways.Much of the appeal of the film, at least for me, lies in its nostalgic recreation of the eighties, featuring not only the political causes of the era but also its fashions and hairstyles and, above all, its pop music, (even if some of the songs we hear were not released until after the date when the film is set). There are some similarities with "The History Boys", another film made in 2006 and also set in an educational establishment (in that case a grammar school) during the mid-eighties. (Dominic Cooper, who plays Spencer here, also appeared in "The History Boys"). I don't think "Starter for Ten" is quite as good as "The History Boys", in which scriptwriter Alan Bennett combined an often brilliant wit with some serious themes and sharp social observation, but it is an often amusing and generally enjoyable look at the Age of Thatcher. 6/10