Starring: Elliot Tittensor, Emilia Clarke, Nico Mirallegro
School friends Tits (Tittensor), Dodge (Mirallegro), Zippy
(Jordan Murphy), Little Gaz (Adam Long) and Penfold (Oliver Heald) are members
of local band Shadow Caster in Manchester, just as the local Madchester scene
is exploding in 1990. Their heroes, The Stone Roses are headlining a concert at
Spike Island in Cheshire, which is promising to be the defining band in the
Stone Roses’ career and Shadow Caster try and find a way to get into the gig
and pass on their demo tape.
Coming hot off of the heels of Shane Meadows’ Stone Roses
documentary, The Stone Roses: Made Of Stone (2013), Spike Island is another
love letter to the critically acclaimed Madchester band. Whilst the film does
portray certain elements of the period and the music lovingly and beautifully
captures the ambience of a young rock band rehearsing and writing away, the
film’s sentimentality comes at the expense of characterisations. The main
characters of Tits and Dodge only seem partially observed and you never get a
true sense of them being fully rounded, whilst their band mates seem even more
sketichily realised (though there are some promising scenes of Penfold, a
dancer in the mould of Bez from Happy Mondays having a difficult relationship with
his battle traumatised father). The film captures the spirit of youth
brilliantly and is often fun and entertaining, but it just needs protagonists
that are better developed and, as a result, more sympathetic.
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