★ 6 / 10
David Essex is quite natural looking here, as
CinemaSerf
David Essex is quite natural looking here, as he develops his "Jim MacLaine" character established in "That'll Be The Day" (1973). Playing the odd gig here and…
David Essex is quite natural looking here, as he develops his "Jim MacLaine" character established in "That'll Be The Day" (1973). Playing the odd gig here and there with his band "The Stray Cats", their roadie "Mike" (Adam Faith) manages to get them an audition with a producer. He takes a bit of a shine to them but changes the dynamic replacing the band leader "Johnny" (Paul Nicholas) with "MacLaine". Any sense of disappointment and rivalry is soon overcome - on the surface, anyway though, as the band go from strength to strength. Eventually they come to the attention of American "Porter Lee Austin" (Larry Hagman) who does a sort of Col. Tom Parker on the man, isolating him and whilst increasing his celebrity and wealth, he also exacerbates the increasing feelings of loneliness and shallowness faced by the star who thrives on the oxygen of fame but cannot readily handle it. Retreating, eventually, to a Moorish castle in Spain, it falls to "Mike" to try and keep his charge from imploding. It is not a great film this - the musical numbers are weak and rather poorly staged. That said, though, it is still a rather potent biopic of a man who became an industry for lots of venal hangers-on who cared not a jot for "MacLaine" so long as he was delivering their meal tickets. Hagman is rather good as the manipulative manager and Faith has some skill depicting the loyal, frequently fed up, friend there to constantly try to pick up the pieces. The ending does let it down a bit - I felt it was something of a cop out - but in the round it is still quite an interesting look at how money, hedonism and a good old dose of human nature can turns rags to riches to rags with no great thought, or effort!
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★ 7 / 10
Less a sequel and more a 2nd act
runamokprods
Not a truly great film, but one with impact -- especially when viewed with the film for which this 'sequel' is really more of a 2nd act; "That'll Be The Day".…
Not a truly great film, but one with impact -- especially when viewed with the film for which this 'sequel' is really more of a 2nd act; "That'll Be The Day". Together the two films give us over 3 hours of the life of Jim MacLaine as he goes from bright mid 1950s schoolboy to an aimless drifter shagging every woman he can get his hands on, breaking the hearts of everyone close to him, to stumbling into a career in rock 'n roll, to becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, with all the attendant hollowness of super-stardom in a business designed to make you self your soul and lose sight of what's real.
This 2nd film makes up the rock-star years of Jim's life, but the 1st film makes it clear that his self-destructive tendencies were there long before stardom, And if he's taken advantage of by managers and record labels, he's also a man who was amoral, selfish and at sea long before that.
It's a shame that pop star David Essex isn't an even stronger actor. He's not at all bad, but this is the kind of rich, juicy role in which a great actor could have exposed multiple layers of depth and complexity. Essex does his best, and is always natural, but isn't able to go that step beyond. (director Michael Apted apparently learned that lesson, and had actors play singers to great effect in his later 'Coal Miner's Daughter').
It would also have been great if the film had managed to avoid some of the clichés around rock and roll. It may well be that they're clichés because they're true, but we've also seen them many times, in many films before – even by 1974 when 'Stardust' was made.
One odd thought; on some level the film seems to be channeling Peter Watkins' far more original, political and challenging 1967 U.K. rock film "Privilege', with more slickness, but less grand ambition. No idea if that's intentional, but watching this film made we want to go back and re-visit that one.
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47%
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· 100 ratings
6.5/10
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