Tough but not tough enough.
Thank goodness produce Esther Douglas and her team got their hands on this before a theatre producer did, because Spike Island, by screenwirter Chris Coghill, has jukebox musical written all over it. The story line is classic in this way, beginning in May 1990 when five friends begin their mission to get tickets to a huge Stone Roses gig in the controversial reclaimed toxic waste site, Spike Island.
With this historic concert as the end point of this film, or so we think, it’s disappointing that Spike Island veers so sharply from the politics, giving it a mere nod of acknowledgement before it plunges us into the adolescent lives of Shadowcaster, a Manchurian band in its embryonic stages. Led by the cheeky good egg that is Tits, (Elliot Tittensor), the boys in Shadowcaster wake up, plough through their town, deal with their family crap, record their songs and banter about the girls at their school. Their family trials become what sets this film apart, but not by much.
Tits’ dad is dying, one of his bandmates has to take care of his little sisters, another is being beaten by his mentally ill father and these brief scenes of hardship are woven quite seamlessly into their attempts at getting tickets to see the band that defines them. With these snapshots of their lives away from each other, director Mat Whitecross shows us the escapism they provide for each other. Similarly, with the expected, fantastic soundtrack of Stone Roses hits, he shows us the part music also plays in their ability to handle their hardships and occasionally escape them.
But the edginess of this story rests on its characters being working class Manchurians with difficult lives. There’s no innovative cinematography, nothing really striking in the way these characters are presented. The acting is all excellent and Tittensor gets a chance to shine and takes it, but as a whole, the story feels a little simplistic and underdeveloped. There are the seeds here for something sharp and epic which could be much more than a story about friendship crafted around a mischievous will-they-won’t-they adventure story about getting into a concert.
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