Be wary of opening your heart to this one. A film of two halves, Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light offers feel good delights and absolute devastation in the same hand. A tribute to the power of meaningful lyricism and subtle reminder of the forces that seek to estrange the freedom to be from those who dare to be different. All is umbrellaed beneath the rousing music of Bruce Springsteen, voice of the disenfranchised and powerhouse of the American songbook. When a boy from Luton hears that he was born to run, he runs. He runs in the face of adversity and runs because it’s all he’s got. The promised land awaits him and maybe one day we’ll all get there.
Charming is a relic, an archive rediscovery from a box marked ‘early noughties’. It is alike a film taking advantage of the universal amnesiac response to some long forgotten original release, fifteen years ago, with a second punt at success. While the cast is peppered with noughties names – High School Musical’s Ashley Tisdale, My Big Fat Greek Wedding star Nia Vardalos and ‘Sk8ter Boi’ singer Avril Lavigne among it – the plot is retrogressively stuck in a pre-Shrek whirl of conservatism. He was a boy, she was a girl. Can they make it any more obvious?
The leap from school textbook alternative to all-star, big screen bonanza is about as impressive as they come in the world of non-fiction. Dating back to the nineties, Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories books have spawned magazines, plays, proms, video games, theme parks and two BAFTA winning television series to gain renown as a British institution. It’s an empire even the Romans would be proud of – thus making said ancient civilisation an apt starting point for the franchise’s new cinematic lease of life. Whilst Rotten Romans does little to convince that narrative structure is the future of the franchise, its winning cast and good nature carrying things through. More laughs would have been welcome all the same.
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