One Word Movie

The History Boys

I have reviewed this film already (shit) but I thought I would go and see it so I could give you more of indication as to why it is so mannered and fecal. Let me deal with the good things first. It is competently made, and Uncle Monty is entertaining in it, although when I see him, I can't stop thinking of the pigs in Animal Farm walking on their hind legs. And if you like reading the back of cereal packets you will rejoice because there are lots of words in this movie. Rather too many in fact. I could have done with some bed scenes and an exploding helicopter.

Unfortunately, although the film is in love with high culture, it rather lectures to you about it, in the manner of a boring old farty who knows everything about the late Beethoven string quartets, but refuses to go and see The Big Lebowski. The whole thing comes across, not as history, but as nostalgia. And it is not even nostalgia for the eighties. This offends me. The kids in this movie are supposed to be five years older than me, but they are weedy little swots who would have been bog-washed repeatedly had they inhabited the real world. The whole thing is fake because it's sustained by nostalgia for Uncle Monty's vanished 50s childhood, and he's a miserable bastard anyway.

The other things that are wrong with this is that it has about 6 endings, presented in ascending order of risibility. The direction is uncomfortable, and the editing is stagey - at one point the camera even waits for people, just to move on and off the set. Why not film a fucking bus queue? Someone should tell Nicholas Hynter that there is a modern editing technique called the cut, which is designed to remove the boring bits I don't want to watch (after the bed scene, before the exploding helicopter). And it looks like they used really cheap film stock, because the grains of emulsion on the print are fucking huge, like a big man's fist.

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 2:20 PM