Not even a storming soundtrack of mod classics can save a humdrum scooter-to-Brighton caper, which keeps its eye fatally on the rear-view mirror
Quadrophenia love dies hard. After July’s ill-fated cast reunion To Be Someone, now follows this humdrum standalone from the sentimental end of
British cinema’s poverty row, seeking to capitalise on residual fondness for all things mod. The star is a scooter: a nifty runaround with two dozen rear-view mirrors , it’s a worthy steed for Patrick McNamee’s callow latter-day knight John Parker (geddit?) as he retraces his late dad’s tyre tracks from Burnhamland to Brighton. This journey – and the rite-of-passage it represents – encompasses legends of old Jam gigs, 1980s songs picking up where the first mods left off, and cameos from associate producer Patsy Kensit and Eldorado’s Jesse Birdsall.
Those mirrors prove symbolic of an entirely backward-looking enterprise. A prolific writer-director whose Me, Myself & Di opened back in June, Chris Green is at least on more crowd-pleasing form than he was in 2018’s Strangeways Here We Come, one of the most aggressively off-putting films I’ve ever seen. It’s hard not to feel well disposed to something that opens with Secret Affair’s My World, sets a moped montage to the Style Council’s Speak Like a Child and stops the action dead so everyone can have a mini-mosh to the Chords’ Maybe Tomorrow. Yet the sounds far outstrip the sights. With licensing fees presumably devouring his budget, Green resorts to
shooting in cramped kitchens and overcast laybys; and, for a supposedly eye-opening travelogue, the scenery remains thoroughly middle-of-the-road.