That'll Be the Day

Trailer—That'll Be the Day

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source: That'll Be the Day

David Essexs acting skills are very limited and do not extend to convincing me that he is 16,or that a teenager would run away from school or home.The story meanders around getting nowhere fast.It includes a totally gratuitous and unnecessary underage rape scene.Any sympathy one might have for the main character is totally lst..

Classic tail of adolescent male on leaving school refusing to get stuck in a dead end job, working in a corner shop if I recall rightly. Picks up a guitar and works his way to stardom. Rejecting his family, childhood girlfriend anc baby on route. David Essex is great as Jim MacLaine as is Ringo Starr his partner in crime when working the waltzers and Wong man when pulling the birds. The 50's soundtrack original songs produced by David Edmunds. Overall it's a great taste of life in the early 60s.

Working-class British lad in 1958 leaves school and hitches a ride into the next town, where he has hopes of becoming a rock star. Extension of the "angry young man" U.K. dramas from the early 1960's, with real-life pop star and Alan Bates-lookalike David Essex in the lead, has some appeal but is full of recycled ingredients: jukebox hits, nostalgic surroundings, boys chasing "birds". The correlation between Essex and his own roaming father (who left his wife and child after returning from service) is made too obvious, and the addition of Ringo Starr in a supporting role is cute but somewhat disconcerting (one of the threads within the film is the perception in late-'50's England that true rock-'n-rollers had to be from America--this before the Beatles rose to prominence). Essex, with his low-key charm and overbite, is quite believable, but neither the script nor the direction offers anything other than a formula. It's both an updating of, and throwback to, the British dramas of Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay, but without fresh subtext it becomes flabby. Released the same year as "American Graffiti", which romanticized this generation, the movie's downbeat tone is alienating--and its anti-hero leanings are unsatisfying. ** from ****

David Essex stars in the first of two films about Jimmy Maclaine, a young man who wants to be a rock star. Here we follow Maclaine as his father comes home from the war, leaves his family and Maclaine grows up, running away from home as a teen to make his future in the world, first by the sea, then at a holiday camp and finally in a carnival. Eventually he returns home to start his own family. Slice of life in late 50's early 60's as rock music was shaking everything up and the post war kids were looking for a way out. I had always heard this was the better of the two Maclaine films (Stardust being the second) but I wasn't really impressed. For what ever reason I couldn't really connect with what was happening on screen. Perhaps I was waiting for something the film isn't, the sequel charts Maclaine's rise and fall as a pop star, so I was waiting for a music film instead of a family drama and character study (come on you have Ringo Starr, Keith Moon and Dave Edmunds in the cast don't you think it'll be a music film?). On some level it made watching the sequel better, but ultimately it wasn't something I need to see again. You may feel differently since the film isn't bad, just one that I didn't connect to.

Striving hard for the authentic feel of the late 1950s scene in working class England and the realistic films of the period That'll be the day is unfortunately weighed down by the double burden of an unimaginative script and David Essex. He tries to be deep and meaningful but emerges as a tedious bore. The eyes of his fellow actors seem to glaze over whenever he recites his lines and because his character and performance are so lifeless you are left with the overwhelming desire to give him a good slap. The one redeeming thing about this whole misguided venture is that - much like during his recording career - he does hardly any real singing. Dull.

This film and its sequel "Stardust" are really a thinly-disguised version of John Lennon's rise to stardom with "The Beatles." It stars 1970s British heartthrob David Essex as Jim MacClaine, but this first film in the series is desperately slow and repetitive. It involves Essex going from one dead-end job to another, getting laid again and again and again with various anonymous girls. He goes from dropping out of school and being a deckchair attendant to working in a holiday camp (where he befriends a surprisingly sleazy Ringo Starr) to finally working in a fairground. David Essex has the looks of a movie star, but not the charisma or acting talent. He's a bit wooden at times and he hardly sings at all, which is where his real talent lies. The film does capture the grimness of post-war 1950s Britain well and there is some commentary on class, but the script has no structure whatsoever. It's as aimless as its hero. The sex scenes are quite graphic and there is a morally dubious scene where Essex forces himself on an underage girl (Ringo asks Essex if he's been "gardening" again from the grass stains on his trousers afterwards). There are many cameos from real pop stars. From the aforementioned Ringo Starr, we also have another famous drummer in Keith Moon from "The Who" (he was the music supervisor on the film) and Billy Fury. Many future stars of British television are also visible here in supporting roles. Robert Lindsay, of "My Family" and "Citizen Smith" fame, appears as the best friend of David Essex and he's a constant reminder of what the Essex character could have become if he had gone on to college like him. Karl Howman is also here and in the sequel, he would go on to star in "Brush Strokes" and the series of "Flash" floor-cleaner TV commercials that seems to have become his career of late. The sequel is a big improvement as things actually start happening, although it is still a clichéd rock star's rise-and-fall story with conmen managers, hangers-on and drug abuse thrown in for good measure. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time watching this. Turner Classic Movies described this as a "superb movie." I would strongly disagree with that. I found it extremely boring. It moves at a snail's pace. I was surprised to see the name of renowned producer David Puttnam in the credits. He must have been just learning his trade and probably didn't know what he was doing. He would go on to produce far better movies like the Oscar-winning "The Killing Fields" and "Midnight Express." The film makes several strange references to John Wayne. From Wayne's "That'll Be The Day" line from "The Searchers" (it also inspired a Buddy Holly song) being the title of the film, to name of the David Essex character being taken from Wayne's "Big Jim McClain" movie, albeit with a different spelling.

After spending a busy day out with in Milton Keynes over the weekend, I decided to end the night by watching a movie on TV. Having seen the fun The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955-also reviewed) the last time I was in the city, I again tuned into Talking Pictures TV, and found a film was about to start that'll make my day. View on the film: Made when the lead actor was at the top of the charts with the hit single Rock On, director Claude Whatham & David Cronenberg's regular cinematographer Peter Suschitzky surprisingly avoid a glossy Pop shine with a dirt under the fingernails Kitchen Sink grit, with Whatham touring with MacLaine's restlessness in naturally dimly-lit bedrooms with a new lass each night,and long panning shots across the rising damp sinking into MacLaine's life in dour coloured, crumbling households. Filmed on location in the Isle of Wight, Whatham soaks up the location with fluid hand-held camera moves trekking with MacLaine round the local shops, night clubs and sights, recording the period with the New Wave-style of "capturing the moment" in the movie being filmed around locals going about their day. Hired by producer David Puttnam to write a script based on the Harry Nilsson's song "1941", the debut screenplay by Ray Connolly follows the verses of the song, but takes a welcomed turn by modelling MacLaine on the upbringing of John Lennon, most prominently in MacLaine's dad leaving the family home at a early age, which Connolly unveils in dissolving flashbacks as continuing to haunt MacLaine's outlook on life.