Absolute Beginners

Two theories come to mind after watching Julien Temple's notorious flop Absolute Beginners:

1. Temple misread the schedule and found himself booked to start filming after only a morning's rehearsal using a cast who had never met, or

2. In 1986, cocaine was both cheap and plentiful in the UK.

There's a third possibility: Temple can't make a film in a fit – well, unless it involves the Sex Pistols, on the basis of The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle and The Filth & The Fury. Feverish performances, twitchy editing, hallucinatory plot: in fact, Absolute Beginners is less a movie than a syndrome. Temple's day-glo musical paean to 1958 London combines ill-rehearsed staginess with some of the most declamatory acting imaginable. For the first half of the film Eddie O'Connell (as lead character Colin) and Patsy Kensit (as his true love Crepe Suzette) are neck-and-neck in their race to out-wooden each other, but both are beaten to the punch by David Bowie, sporting the world's least convincing American accent in order to play a wicked advertising mogul who convinces Colin to sell out (ie: be paid) instead of tooling around taking photographs for... er, some reason or other.

The film is also a clunky story about race relations, which might have been more successful if any of the black performers got serious screen time, or if they weren't consistently portrayed as sexy hard-dancin' jazzbos too lost in their own tribal rhythms to even notice when, say, their house is on fire (although there is a witch doctor who does a rain dance – so, you know, that's good). And it doesn't shy away from bravely revealing the real victims of racism: white teenagers.

So: terrible acting, politically confused script, direction that suggests ADD – is that all Absolute Beginners offers? Not at all. There's also a marijuana freak-out scene worthy of Reefer Madness, a choreographed gang war that suggests Temple really wanted to make West (End) Side Story, and a tragic cameo by the Kinks' Ray Davies. There's also a moody sequence set to the Style Council's 'Have You Ever Had It Blue', a song whose sophisticated 80s pop-jazz would be anachronistic if there had been a single thing suggesting that the film was set in the late 50s: for a period piece, Absolute Beginners lacks the gritty authenticity of, say, Grease.

The editing is abysmal, the choreography uncoordinated, the dubbing frequently out of synch and the foley work hilarious (though perfect for drinking games: why not take a shot every time the exact same recording of breaking glass is used?). That James Fox and Robbie Coltrane crawled out from under this fiasco is testament to their talents.

Extras None. Not even scene selection. Even for mid-price, that's shoddy

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