Watch Absolute Beginners For Free

Why so much hype?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I always had a soft spot for this film for reasons rather intangible. It possesses that unmistakable 80's energy visible of a pre-ADHD era and a colour & style palate that not only screams at you but effectively bludgeons you over the head for extra measure. If you want to know what this film is about, it's all up there on screen.Unfortunately the visual vivacity does not extend to the script. In fact it outpaces the script, literally teasing it to catch up, and in the rare moments it does you're reminded exactly why it doesn't work. Somewhere in there is a story of young love torn apart, set against a background of rising fascism engineered by opportunistic property developers seeking to gentrify what's more or less a somewhat idealised version of a 50's London working class multicultural neighbourhood where everyone is poor but still able to dress stylishly and emanate urban cool. In other words "Slum chic". Temple just doesn't have the talent to manage it properly and at times it feels like one is watching two or three completely separate films. This feeling is most jarring during the complete lack of transition between the supposedly intertwining film plots. Instead of flow you get the abrupt introduction of a musical number and one that usually doesn't feel like it bears any resemblance to the scene you watched 5 seconds before. It feels like papering over the cracks primarily due to a complete lack of ideas as to how to properly hang it all together.That said some of the musical interludes are fantastic. Particularly enjoyable is Ray Davies lamenting his home life in the middle of a superb three level set from the bottom floor kitchen to the top floor attic, complete with nagging unfaithful wife (played by Mandy Rice Davies, there are many great cameos for film, music and history nerds to enjoy spotting), a lothario boarder and a energetically masturbating sex obsessed teenage boy.The performances are generally fine. I liked Eddie O'Connell tho it appears the complete box office failure put paid to any chance of a burgeoning film career as, other than the odd British TV series episode over the years, his place in the acting universe has become that of a rather minor character actor. Patsy Kensit does what she can but her role is tossed about on the confused whims of the director and screenplay more than any other, so it's no wonder that she comes across as emotionally unstable and I'm not entirely sure it's all down to her acting. Btw her name in the film is Crepe Suzette and that's far too easy to belittle so I won't.I've always been a big fan of the greatly underrated late Anita Morris and she does a role she can do in her sleep more than adequately. I'm also a big fan of 80's era Bowie (my formative teenage years) but his American accent is like a forced pastiche of every movie trailer voice-over guy you've ever heard. It's pretty awful.My favourite part of the film is the opening scene which is a wonder of marvellous choreography set amongst a magnificent urban set (obviously constructed inside a studio). The camera tracks our narrator and main character as he weaves in and out of streets, stores and alleyways, surrounded by the activity of probably a couple of hundred actors, musicians and dancers interspersed with moving vehicles of multiple types. It lasts for a good couple of minutes and it's a wonderful sequence. The The problem is it raises the viewer expectation level for the rest of the movie, something it simply fails to achieve.It's a film that seems like it's trying very hard to be an inner London West Side Story, set in an 80's ideal of what the 50's "should have been like". In that respect it almost feels like a companion piece to Streets of Fire, a mythical mostly recognisable land that isn't really here, especially given both films share a vaguely similar musical backbone (tho Streets does it better). Despite this it's still a remarkable curiosity that in the hands of a better filmmaker could have been a pleasant memory for many more than the few who bought a ticket to see it. As it is it's a colourful gaudy confused mess with the energy to power 10 films.

If you've read the original novel, as I did, you will probably hate this thing.The film version of _Absolute Beginners_ is a nightmarish conglomerate of 1980s anachronisms attempting to create a "period piece" set in the late 1950s and failing to re-create or even pay homage to that period -- the US monstrosity of _Dirty Dancing_ does similar to 1963, except that film proved financially successful despite having equally amateurish screen writing. In addition to suffering from "looking too 1980s", the characters have been changed, re-arranged, and downplayed to the point that the only characteristics they have in common with those of the novel are the slightest superficial looks and, of course, their names: Suze is transformed from the narrator's flighty ex-girlfriend and promiscuous negrophile who willingly plans to marry a closeted old queen for money (at her own admittance in the first few pages) into a hapless and naive "Eve"-archetype seduced by fame and glamour, exploited and somehow scammed into a sham marriage by her boss, who surprisingly wasn't given a Van Dyke and pointy hairstyle. She and the narrator, re-named "Colin" (after the book's author, Colin MacInnes) for the film, are also in a relationship.Big Jill's character, a lesbian seemingly butch yet "fop like" in her mid-20s who acts as pimp to a cadre of young and bubble-headed lesbians, and one of the narrator's closest friends, dispensing frank wisdom to the narrator, is reduced to a sort of "named extra" with only a few throw-away lines, and tonnes of comical outfits.The Fabulous Hoplite, a gay young man and another close friend of the narrator in the novel, is also reduced to the point of being pointless in the film, camped-up and all but ignored.The narrator's father in the novel is a sort of sad minor character but in the film, he's played to come off as optimistic and oddly spirited despite the squalid neighbourhood, and the disarray of his marriage to the narrator's mum seems, for all practical purposes, ignored.In its favour, the music (for what it is) is well-composed, and you have to give the production and writing crews credit for actually taking a line from the book ("...some days, they'll write musicals about the 1950s...") as their inspiration to write a musical, but in the world of bad camped-up musicals, this is among the most poorly executed in the bunch. Unlike _Shock Treatment_ or _Starstruck_ crucial plot elements are treated as afterthoughts. Unlike _The Apple_, there is a choppy and uneven flow between musical numbers and spoken dialogue.You really can't blame it's "too 1980s" feel on the fact that it was created in the 1980s. The film version of _Annie_ released in 1981, pays a wonderfully well-executed tribute to the look and feel of New York City in the 1930s, and _Napolean Dynamite_ manages to capture a gritty sort of look and feel of the 1980s despite being made on a low budget in 2003 (though it's not explicitly set in the 1980s, those who lived through the decade cannot deny that the film "feels very 1980s"). Obviously, it was _possible_ to make something good out of this, especially considering the iconic status that the source novel has in the UK, but it fails most apparently in the look and feel, and also in its treatment of the source material, which is downright disrespectful.Perhaps if you haven't read and have no intentions of reading the novel, you could enjoy this campy 1980s anachronism giving a shameful parody of late-1950s Soho London's modernist jazz set. I can definitely see what the writing team were attempting, but they definitely could have done better. With Boy George as a household name and mixed-race musicians and bands on the charts in 1986 UK, they definitely did _not_ need to bowdlerise the characters in the ways that they ended up doing. In fact, I'd go so far as saying that the writers wound up doing what both the book and film criticised harshly -- it ended up having a bunch of adults cranking out crap and treating its targeted teen-aged audience like two-bit idiots to make a quick buck off of.

I remember watching this film back in 86' when it first came out & what an awful film. The acting was atrocious the plot was so flimsy it would or is that should have blew away in a breath of wind. I think it put me to sleep on more than one occasion & i was not tired that i remember. Please avoid at all costs better still have all your teeth taken out with no anaesthetic cos that would be more entertaining. It's just a pity i couldn't give it a zero or a negative score. I wish i had not wasted my money getting this one from the video shop all i can say was that the tape it was on was still brand new practically hardly surprising as the film was so poor. If i remember right i sat & watched it with a girl i really wanted to go out with & the fact she was sat next to me was still not enough to keep me awake thats how bad this film was.

I simply don't know of any better modern musical. Stunningly creative and an absolute starburst of colors and sounds. Amazing sets that are both "real" and fantastical at the same time. Plus, there's a huge number of them, so it must have cost a fortune. Ray Davies' singing in a house built like a dollhouse is a knockout scene--totally creative and unusual and is often the scene which is considered the high point of the film. David Bowie is fabulous, as is Anita Morris, although her role is way too brief. The movie is from 1986 but it seems absolutely fresh today. A totally wonderful romp and a positive message, in addition. Highest recommendation! Please let's have more winners like this one.