I guess that they couldn't just make a two hour film of people dancing and hunting down rare grooves; any more than they couldn't have just made a two hour film about a boat sinking.
They had to construct a story around the basic premise. Unfortunately, as with Titanic, they ballsed it up.
It's still an entertaining watch, if a little one dimensional. However it does seem a little like a 21st century quadrophenia, without the oomph.
And the focus on the drug culture gradually overtakes the music to a point where the music becomes simply the soundtrack, and not the focus. And the whole point of northern soul is the music isn't it?
Ironically, given the subject matter, I agree with another reviewer on here - the sound quality is abysmal.
Northern soul was about working class kids using American soul music to lift them, albeit temporarily, out of their humdrum lives. This film is a dark and violent depiction of what happens when drugs take control.
Where we should have had the euphoria, the celebration of youth, and the joy of music, instead we have violence, lost friendship, hopelessness, squalor, and finally heroin
In the right hands this could've been so much better
They had to construct a story around the basic premise. Unfortunately, as with Titanic, they ballsed it up.
It's still an entertaining watch, if a little one dimensional. However it does seem a little like a 21st century quadrophenia, without the oomph.
And the focus on the drug culture gradually overtakes the music to a point where the music becomes simply the soundtrack, and not the focus. And the whole point of northern soul is the music isn't it?
Ironically, given the subject matter, I agree with another reviewer on here - the sound quality is abysmal.
Northern soul was about working class kids using American soul music to lift them, albeit temporarily, out of their humdrum lives. This film is a dark and violent depiction of what happens when drugs take control.
Where we should have had the euphoria, the celebration of youth, and the joy of music, instead we have violence, lost friendship, hopelessness, squalor, and finally heroin
In the right hands this could've been so much better