Synopsis
Javed is living in a time where you're expected to do what you're told to do. Live for family, get a good job & get married. There's no room for creativity. He's got other ideas though, and when he goes to college and meets new friends his life is forever changed by them, and Bruce Springsteen.
Review
As with superhero fatigue, music-themed movie fatigue is setting in. Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Yesterday and now Blinded By The Light, it's a lot to take when it feels like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. It doesn't help in this case that while I know Bruce Springsteen songs I wouldn't be able to tell you that they were his songs. That meant that the movie for me relied heavily on everything outside of its musical moments.
Javed wants to be a writer, but his father is set on something much more mainstream that will provide for their futures. When Javed starts college and enrols in an English course he's all set for getting new experiences and meeting new people. One of those people is Roops, a Bruce Springsteen fan with a passion for life who offers him two cassette tapes to help give him a different perspective on things.
When Javed's father loses his jobs along with most of the town things at home become difficult. But there are no new jobs and Javed is being pressured into doing the right thing for his family and falling into line with his father's wishes.
Blinded By The Light is a lovely film. I could quite easily leave that statement as my whole review. I came out buoyed with good feelings and was incredibly content. It's genuinely a nice film that gave a really strong representation of the time it's set, and despite the hard messages it had to deal with it also brought a lot of hope and triumph.
It does have its issues though. This is definitely a biopic with musical numbers. It's not a musical. When I listed off the other music related films at the beginning they all had something in common. The music flowed with what was going on around it. It was seamless in those three, but in this it wasn't. While the floating lyrics seemed quirky to begin with it was a bit of a one hit wonder for me. I didn't feel that this effect conveyed any more emotion or story visually than the actor did/could have done themselves with the addition of some volume on the track.
There's also an exceedingly long number in the middle that quickly became more frustrating than enlightening to watch.
After checking the creative team behind the film I was not surprised to see the other films by their name. They're all good and entertaining movies, that for me come under the same sort of classification, "remembered with nostalgic thoughts". By that I mean when someone asks me in a years time what I thought I'll say, "oh yeah, that was a nice film". There is nothing wrong with these films at all, they're just not the ones I feel the urge to see more than once.
When it comes to the characters I wasn't particularly fond of the youngsters. I'd say probably because they were maybe a little too annoyed at everybody and everything for my liking. The storyline around them felt like it was weighted badly and not everything got the coverage it deserved.
Kulvinder Ghir probably had the best character in the film, Javed's father Malik was the most consistent throughout and his performance was brilliant. The comedy circuit also brought us the second and third "heavy hitters" in the form of Rob Brydon as Matt's dad and Sally Phillips as the headteacher. Brydon got a good couple of scenes but I thought Phillips was done a disservice with the script for her part, it felt more like a bad sketch show than a film.
The surprise inclusion was Hayley Atwell. I love her as an actress but this film didn't seem to be the right fit. She can be very funny, but I don't think this sort of comedy/drama is quite suited to her talent. Ms Clay wasn't there for comic relief, but it felt like the character could have done with a bit more humour to bring her in line with some of the other pieces of the film.
I have no doubt that this will appeal to a lot of people, and as I mentioned earlier it really is a lovely film. Had I got more knowledge of the music then perhaps it might have appealed to me more, but as it was it was just quite enjoyable.
What you should do
You'll know if you'll enjoy this one, and if you get that feeling then I urge you to go and see it. If you're sitting on the fence then maybe wait for it to appear on streaming services
Movie thing you wish you could take home
I've been through the 80s once, I'm fine without another reminder of them.
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