Light entertainment
Deborah Ross
This film is a perfectly amiable yet inconsequential rom-com, so if perfectly amiable yet inconsequential romcoms are your thing, you’re basically in clover. What else to say? Nothing that I can think of. That’s basically it. Hohum ... how’s the family? Alright ...?
OK, look, it’s fine. Starter for Ten doesn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, which is a shame because, as President of The Wheel Reinventors Society of Great Britain, I would like to see it reinvented in my lifetime — that is my dream — but there are some nice bits in it. It’s not a rubbish film. You’ll probably have a good-ish time. And the actor James McAvoy (Steve from Shameless) is truly darling; not especially good-looking but with the same kind of delicious, sexy charm as, say, John Cusack. I wouldn’t kick him out of bed. I wouldn’t kick either out of bed. I’d just bagsy the middle and say: ‘Boys, when it comes to being kicked out of bed, you have nothing to fear from me.’ Anyway, it’s based on a screenplay by David Nicholls, who also wrote the comic novel of the same name and who worked on Cold Feet. Nicholls is being billed as ‘the new Richard Curtis’, which is about as meaningful as saying ‘yesterday is the new tomorrow’ or ‘awake is the new sleep’, but if everyone must be the ‘new’ someone else, who am I to quarrel?
It’s set in the Eighties and is about Brian Jackson (McAvoy), a working-class boy from Essex who goes to Bristol University. Here, he attempts to fulfil his childhood dream of appearing on University Challenge — ‘Be There and Be Square’, reads the audition poster — while negotiating quite a lot of tricky, kissy, kissy stuff. In implausibly double-quick time he befriends both knockout glamorous blonde Alice (Alice Eve) and the darker Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) whom we recognise as his soul mate from the off — it’s so painfully obvious! but he doesn’t, which is a little bit tiresome. And he thinks he’s clever! Still, it all comes right in the end, which is a very mushy end, almost emetic, which also makes this film what? A rom-com that is also a vom-com? And it’s directed by Tom Vaughan (also Cold Feet). So do we have a Tom-vom-rom-com? I do hope so. As Secretary (part-time; due to my other commitments) of the Rhyme With Om Society it’s what we’ve always hoped for.
Still, I don’t want to be too harsh, although I couldn’t say why. Possibly it’s because this film is just so eager to please. It wants to lick your face, like a puppy, and you wouldn’t want to kick a puppy would you? — except out of bed, because that would be unhygienic and what would James think? McAvoy is seriously winning; especially when it comes to capturing a certain post-adolescent gaucheness, and there are some other neat performances, too. Benedict Cumberbatch is blissfully over-the-top as Patrick, the priggish, pompous team captain, while The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gattis is a hoot as a slightly creepy Bamber Gascoigne.
Plus, as I’ve said, there are some nice bits in it. There’s a scene in an Italian pizzeria, decorated, early Eighties-style, with wicker Chianti bottles everywhere, that’s pretty funny, as well as one where Brian (staying with Alice and her parents) gets stoned on his first-ever toke, wanders around the house and encounters her father (Charles Dance), who is in the buff. Now, if perfectly amiable yet inconsequential rom-coms are not your thing, but a peep at Charles Dance in the buff is, there is at least something in it for you. I wouldn’t kick Charles out of bed either. I could have James one side, John the other, and Charles running horizontally along the bottom. People often ask me: ‘Debs, what would it take for you to be in clover?’ And that pretty much answers it, I think. There’d certainly be no room for that puppy.
This is a very light film, the kind that floats away the minute you exit the cinema. Whoosh!, there it goes. There isn’t any journey as such, it’s possibly too predictable, and it really doesn’t have anything to say about anything, which is what makes it so hard to find something to say about it. Eighties politics are scarcely even mentioned, and although it does try to say something about class — particularly through Brian’s childhood friend, Spencer (Dominic Cooper) — it does so in such a clumsy, tired and clichéed way it’s only ever silly and annoying.
On a brighter note, though, although it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, which is always disappointing, it is amiable enough in its Tom-vom-rom-com sort of way. You might very well like it. Toodle-pip.
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