A musical adaptation of Colin MacInnes' novel about life in late 1950s London. Nineteen-year-old photographer Colin is hopelessly in love with model Crepe Suzette, but her relationships are strictly connected with her progress in the fashion world. So Colin gets involved with a pop promoter and tries to crack the big time. Meanwhile, racial tension is brewing in Colin's Notting Hill housing estate... Written by
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kryan-1 from London, England
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What a Corker of a movie which moves at a lightning pace of youth in the 1950's based on the youth culture book by Colin McInnes. We see the birth of the teenager in Britain wiping away the grey cobwebs of post war Britain and revitalising it with a kaleidoscope of colour. Eddie O'Donnell is the spunky immaculately dressed hedonist who wants to dance and carouse the night away in Swinging London and Patsy Kensit's film debut is superb as Colin'ns(O'Donnel's) sex kitten who's a real temptress. The music score is excellent which interwines with the plot very well and some of London's well known honey pots are featured, like The Wag Club which is sadly no more. Ray Davies actually appears in the film, as does David Bowie and Sade.Not forgetting the great songs by The Style Council and Smiley Culture with an underlying jazz groove by Gil Evans. The Introduction to this movie is one of the best ever and features a cast of thousands. Congratulations Julian Temple on this aesthetic musical delight.
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Sean Gallagher (seankgallagher@yahoo.com) from Brooklyn, NY
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I had just graduated high school(in California) when this movie came out, in the summer of 1986. Given the heavy promotion given it by MTV(I believe they had a contest whose winner would appear in the film, though I may have remembered that wrong), and given that David Bowie, whose music career was on the upswing, had a starring role(along with a mix of musicians like veteran Ray Davies(of the Kinks) and newcomer Sade), you'd expect the movie would be a hit. Instead, it barely made a dent in America(in their year-end issue, Rolling Stone called it one of the hype jobs of the year), and seems to have been largely forgotten(though in an interview with Rolling Stone about a year later, Bowie claimed it was a cult hit). In fact, while star Patsy Kensit has had an erratic career, Bowie continued to make music and the occasional movie, and director Julien Temple, after this and EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY, went back to his forte, music videos, it's sort of ironic that the most successful person to come from that movie is Robbie Coltrane(TV's CRACKER), who only had a small role here.
Why am I boring you all with this? Because ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is one of the unsung classics of the 80's. Of course, having grown up on old-time musicals(my dad was a fan), I'm probably more receptive to them than the average person seems to be today, but this is one of the best ones of the last two decades. Not only are all the numbers well-written and well sung(in addition to Bowie, Davies, and Sade, jazz great Gil Evans wrote the instrumental score, and Style Council contributes a song. Also, female lead Patsy Kensit sings one, while male lead Eddie O'Connell lip-syncs his numbers), they're also imaginatively staged. A good example is "Motivation," one of two numbers Bowie sings(the other being the title song), which includes parodies of Busby Berkley-type numbers. There's also a wicked parody of teen pop.
As for the story, Temple has the fine novel to fall back on(by Colin MacInnes), and while there's probably too many ideas trying to burst out(teen alienation, racism, "Selling Out"(the name of another song), he juggles them all with finesse. And the cast handles things with aplomb, with the exception of, surprisingly, Bowie; while he's appropriately super-smooth as the oily executive, his voice(intended to be an American accent?) is annoying. But O'Connell and Kensit are both fresh and appealing, Anita Morris and James Fox both play well in their typecast roles(as, respectively, a sexpot gossip columnist and an effete fashion designer), there's a nice turn by Mandy Rice-Davies(who, you may remember, was in real life involved in the Profumo scandal), and a host of others in small but memorable parts(the ones I can remember are Steven Berkoff(BEVERLY HILLS COP) and Bruce Payne(PASSENGER 57) as fascists, and Paul Rhys(VINCENT AND THEO) as a mod). All in all, well worth tracking down.
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d-mael from Langhorne, PA
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First, I must respectfully disagree with the other reviewer who hated this movie. It has a complex set of plot lines that deal with a number of issues revolving around the lives of a young up-and-coming "pop photographer", and his love interest -- played by Patsy Kensit. Then, there is the "old queen" (also an unscrupulous real estate developer) who marries Patsy. Now, add to that the ad agency aspect (David Bowie's song and dance routine to "Selling Out" is a classic), plus the racial tensions in 1950's or 1960's London, and you have a multi-layered plot tapestry.
Personally, I don't mind that David Bowie is only in the movie for ten minutes -- I am a fan of Bowie, but this is really not "his movie".
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britishdominion
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Julien Temple's "Absolute Beginners" is probably more well known for it's breathtaking and legendary opening tracking shot through a gloriously campy backlot version of London's SoHo District (so influential it even served as an in-joke in Robert Altman's "The Player") AND for the film's behind-the-scenes B.O. failure both at home (where it was trumped up as to herald the coming of the "new" British cinema) and abroad. But upon a fresh look in the days after the visual assault of "Moulin Rouge" and the puffery of "Chicago", smarter DVD viewers will certainly (hopefully) now find "Absolute Beginners". MGM's timing couldn't be more perfect: the film should find an audience that has caught up with the form, patient enough to sit through the razzle-dazzle with a cast that frequently, joyously, breaks into song when the moment is right.
Director Temple - he of the Sex Pistols' "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle", "Earth Girls Are Easy" and a career of 80's short and long-form rock videos - takes what was a very-dead movie genre and breathes life into a freewheelingly complex - perhaps overreaching - story of "England's First Teenagers". The idea is pure Temple: pop art, pop culture and commercialism all served up in a beautiful, thoughtful package if as inherently artificial as the people and era it documents. The film crosses classic kitchen-sink drama and the dreamy ambition of the "youth" pictures of the day - albeit with a knowingly 80's sensibility.
"Absolute Beginners" follows its two young "teen" stars - amateur photographer Eddie O'Connell and the lovely Patsy Kensit as a neophyte fashion designer - as they discover that their blooming talents put them in the right-place-right-time of late 50's London, and that these same talents are a highly desired and marketable currency in the pop idol-crazed Blighty. All of the "adults" in the film (David Bowie as a oily American marketing guru and James Fox as a foppish and callous fashionista are standouts) are the force out to co-opt and corrupt our two young lovers, and their love does get called into question in the pursuit of success and the almighty British Sterling. A sub-plot of sorts involving nasty Steven Berkoff ("Beverly Hills Cop") wedging a "Keep England White" racial cleansing of the soddy London White City ghettos coldly highlights the cultural plasticness of the navelgazing fad-frenzy time, which leads to the film's firey denouement.
And this is a musical! But what a musical it is: each of the picture's numbers is a virtual showstopper set-piece. There's Ray Davies of "The Kinks" as a Landlord in an awesome "Quiet Life" eye-popper that features the Brit-Rock legend chasing his boarders through an artificial three-level house all the while singing and soft-shoeing up a storm; the formerly mentioned Bowie's "That's Motivation!" a hilarious lesson on the evils of mass-marketing; and a wild Jamaican-Jazz fusion fashion show that Kensit makes all her own. The film's musical director was the late Gil Evans, and his contribution gives this film a classy, thoughtful pedigree that the story tries very hard to match. Watch for Sade Adu, Robbie Coltrane, Anita Morris and Mandy Rice-Davies in bit parts.
Yes, the film's serious reach hardly exceeds its glitzy grasp, but it's difficult to fault a movie that attempts to exhume the movie musical, tries to tell a overly complicated tale in which people still break into song, crams the edges of its widescreen aspect ratio in energetic cinematography, colorful scenery and engaging performances by its leads, PLUS offers a great jazzy soundtrack and kicky musical numbers.
A great double bill with this title would be the Cliff Richard artifact, "The Young Ones".
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cinema_universe from NYC & Cherry Grove
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With the great era of musicals long past, it was interesting to see how stylized & clever this little "musical" film really was.
The story line was nil, but then great musicals don't need one, anyway. --Not to say that this was a "great musical", but the music WAS pretty good, and the film's use of thoughtful & colorful sets was stunning.
The camera movement, the scene changes, the hypnotic (almost psychedelic) fades, and the simply dazzling use of color, more than made up for the silly dialog and tripey sub-plots.
All in all, a good looking, well-mounted, and (except for the ending) enjoyable experience. The fast pace of the dream-like musical sequences made this a much better film than I had anticipated seeing.
I rated it 9, -mostly for sets, color, music, costumes, & photography.
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christophaskell from Premiere Video (Dallas, Tx)
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A fun musical with a lot of energy and great acting, 'Absolute Beginners' will win a place in your heart. This is the sharpest I've seen Bowie in a film, and Patsy Kensit was beautiful as Suzette. A political piece as well as a time piece, Temple captured the feel of a Broadway or West End musical perfectly. A great turnaround for Temple, who really had me worried after directing 'Mantrap'. It is a musical, so liberties have to be allowed, but for fans of the musical this is a great one to check out. Rating: 27/40
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(newchaz64@aol.com) from St. Louis, MO
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This film is clearly not for everyone, but it was a major step forward in the evolution of the movie musical, perhaps the first "post-modern" movie musical, looking back to the history of musical film, paying tribute, but also rejecting and replacing many movie musical conventions. It's a brilliant, exciting film, without which we might not have Moulin Rouge today. And even if you don't get it, the music is terrific enough...
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James Hitchcock from Tunbridge Wells, England
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It is often said that the British just can't do film musicals. That even though we're pretty good at theatrical musicals, the cinematic version is, like gridiron football and republicanism, something best left to our cousins across the Atlantic. This prejudice even survived the award of a "Best Picture" Oscar to "Oliver!", and by the mid-eighties the traditional style of film musical was at a pretty low ebb even in America and virtually extinct in Britain. "Absolute Beginners" was therefore something completely unexpected. It was a British musical which owed nothing to Broadway and very little to the sort of pop-and-rock musicals ("Saturday Night Fever", "Fame", "Flashdance", etc.) which Hollywood had started to turn out in the seventies.
The film was also adapted from an unexpected source; the Colin MacInnes book of the same name about youth culture in late 1950s London. I doubt if MacInnes, who died in 1976, ever imagined that his novel would ever be turned into a musical. The story is set in the long hot summer of 1958. (At least, that's how MacInnes describes it, although Met Office records show that the summer of that year was wet and cool). The main character is Colin, a young photographer. In the original novel he was unnamed, but here he is named after his creator, rather oddly given that the book was not intended to be autobiographical. (MacInnes would have been 44 in 1958, a generation older than his character).
Colin falls in love with Crepe Suzette, an aspiring fashion designer, but she gets engaged to her boss Henley of Mayfair, motivated by career advantage rather than love, as Henley is an arrogant and unpleasant individual, old enough to be Suzette's father. In the book, in fact, the compulsively promiscuous Suzette is also not very pleasant, but here her character is very much softened. The film also deals with the Notting Hill race riots, shown here as having been whipped up by a Fascist rabble-rouser, unnamed but clearly based upon Oswald Mosley. The said demagogue is in league with a corrupt property developer who wants to drive the black inhabitants out of Notting Hill, at the time a very run-down area, in order to further one of his redevelopment schemes.
"Absolute Beginners" was panned by the critics and failed at the box-office. Together with the commercial failures of two other films released about the same time, "Revolution" and "The Mission", it led to a decline in the fortunes of Goldcrest, the major British film studio of the eighties. Some even started talking of a crisis in the British film industry, which had produced so many great films in the first half of the decade. The film was also disliked by literary purists who complained that it was not faithful to the original novel, particularly in the rewriting of MacInnes' ending and the bowdlerisation of Crepe Suzette's character.
And yet I loved the film and still do, even though the critics were partly right. Yes, the film has its flaws. Eddie O'Connell makes an uncharismatic hero, and seems too old for the part of Colin, who is supposed to be a teenager. (O'Connell has faded from view since 1986 to such an extent that I have been unable to find his exact date of birth, but he appears to be about thirty). The storyline does not always flow smoothly, perhaps not surprisingly given that it was the first feature film of its director Julien Temple, thitherto better known as the maker of pop videos and a documentary about the Sex Pistols. As for the literary purists, they are certainly right about its lack of fidelity to its literary source, although in its defence I should say that had it not been for this film I should in all probability never have discovered MacInnes' brilliant novel or his other writings.
The acting, like much in the film, is deliberately stylised. (Those who call it wooden are missing the point). The lovely Patsy Kensit makes a delightful heroine as Suzette in what has been described as her breakthrough role. At the time she was hailed as the "British Bardot" and is still a familiar face, even if she has never achieved her much-quoted ambition "to be more famous than anything or anyone".
Despite its faults, "Absolute Beginners" is a cool and stylish movie. It probably has little to do with the fifties as they actually were, but a lot to do with the fifties as they should have been. It has an immense drive and energy with an absolutely irresistible soundtrack. Modern audiences might be surprised that this is largely jazz based, given that we now tend to look back at the late fifties as the birth of the rock-and-roll era. At that time in Britain, however, before the rise of the Beatles, jazz was still very much part of the youth scene, particularly of the "mod" subculture, rock being associated with the mods' rivals, the "rockers". A number of leading musicians, such as David Bowie, Sade and the Style Council contributed to the film. (Bowie also makes an acting contribution as the property developer Vendice Partners).
I have a personal reason why this film is a favourite. It brings back memories a long hot summer- not that of 1958, when I was not even born, but that of 1986. At the time, I was young and in love and went to see the film with my girlfriend. I remember us coming out of the cinema together on a warm summer's evening, exhilarated by what we had just seen, and walking along the London Embankment, laughing and singing Bowie's great theme song to one another. "As long as we're together, all the rest can go to hell- I absolutely love you". With a memory like that, how could I do other than love this film? 8/10
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Ruadhan McElroy from United States
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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.
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Grann-Bach (Grann-Bach@jubii.dk) from Denmark
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I suppose I didn't know what to expect, when I sat down to watch this. However, I can't possibly imagine that I would have enjoyed it regardless of the quantity of warnings that I had been showered in beforehand. I haven't read the novel(though I understand that it is far superior to this). The movie is an eccentric little number that at times gets to be downright bizarre. I'm all for surrealism, but here, it just felt like they weren't taking the issues that they were dealing with seriously(which makes it difficult for the audience to), in spite of them being as important as identity, the effect fame has on you, and racism. There are even parts where it appears to be poorly "dubbed", meaning the words spoken and the lips moving do not match. How? Why? What? Did I seriously just write that? Did some of the actors not speak English? On that, the performances range somewhat, and Bowie is *terrible*. Why is this a musical, anyway? Not all of the songs chosen make sense. The pace is fast, at least at points. Plot-wise, this takes a nose-dive about halfway through. This is cheesy, and the score is way over the top. There is sensuality in this, and possibly language. I recommend this to fans of the type of tunes of the period this takes place during(the 1950's), and/or theatre. Anyone else, stay away for your own good. 5/10
After submitting the film for a 15 certificate producer Stephen Woolley was contacted by the BBFC and told that Patsy Kensit had revealed a nipple in one of the film's scenes. Despite Woolley's assurance that this was not the case because Kensit had been insistent during filming about not revealing her body, UK censor James Ferman painstakingly trawled through the movie using a BBFC "freeze frame" machine until he was finally convinced that the original information was incorrect. Only then did he grant the film an uncut certificate.
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Paul Weller was originally offered the role of Dean Swift but turned it down.
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The film is based on a novel first published in 1959. One of the incidents portrayed in the story was based on the Notting Hill race riots of August, 1958.
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The character of "Harry Charms" was based on a real-life British manager and impresario of the period, Larry Parnes, who was famous for hiring unknown singers and giving them extravagant stage names (his most famous client was Billy Fury). In 1960 he hired an unknown Liverpool band called The Beatles to accompany one of his lesser stars, Johnny Gentle, on a tour of Scotland, but he decided not to take the Beatles on as clients because he was only interested in handling solo singers, not groups.
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"That's Inspiration" ends with a close-up of a giant record of the song credited to a band called "The Hidden Persuaders." This is an in-joke reference to Vance Packard's book "The Hidden Persuaders," a late-1950's best-seller explaining how advertisers were hiring psychologists as consultants to make their pitches irresistibly appealing to basic human natures.
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The production, in common with the rest of the British film industry at the time, had severe financial problems. Shooting stopped for several weeks due to lack of funds.
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The last feature film of Irene Handl
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Quentin Crisp was offered a minor cameo.
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When Harry Charms is auditioning young singers with Colin, there is a boom mic visible when Harry and Colin first enter the studio.
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During the riot scenes, in one shot a double decker bus is on fire. In the next shot, it isn't burning. In the next shot, it is. (During the T.V. announcers speak to the viewing public about the 'race riots').
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AKAs Titles:
Bulgaria (Bulgarian title) - болŽ‚но на‡инае‰и
Denmark - Absolute Beginners
Spain - Principiantes
Finland - Absolute Beginners
France - Absolute Beginners
Greece (transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title) - Oi arharioi
Hungary - Abszolt kezd‘k
Poland - Absolutni debiutanci
Portugal - Absolutamente Principiantes
Slovenia - Popolni zacetniki
West Germany - Absolute Beginners - Junge Helden
World-wide (English title) (poster title) - Absolute Beginners - The Musical
Release Dates:
Certifications:
Australia:PG / Canada:14A / Finland:K-14 / Iceland:L / Portugal:M/12 / Singapore:PG / Sweden:15 / UK:15 / USA:PG-13 (certificate #27931) / West Germany:16
Movie Details:
MOVIE
