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| Palace Pictures | Release Date: April 18, 1986 |
Starring:
David Bowie, Eddie O'Connell, Eve Ferret, Graham Fletcher-Cook, James Fox, Joseph McKenna, Mandy Rice-Davies, Patsy Kensit, Ray Davies, Tony Hippolyte
Summary:
In London in 1958, a young photographer seeks media stardom to keep the love of a beautiful, aspiring fashion designer.
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One of the most entertaining movies this year, and one of the few that shows real invention and audacity, along with big-studio technical flash. [8 June 1986, p.C27]
Absolute Beginners is a terrifically inventive original musical for the screen. Daring attempt to portray the birth of teenagedom in London, 1958, almost exclusively through song is based upon Colin MacInnes' cult novel about teen life and pop fashion in the percolating moments just before the youth cultural explosion in the early 1960s.
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It remains an engaging, energetic film. [22 Jan 1987, p.9B]
Looking through these layers of time, this flashy, extravagant rock musical, which opens today at the Ziegfeld, elevates style to a symptom and cause of social change. And though it aims for more coherence than it delivers, it has endless flair with no self-importance...For all its unevenness, Absolute Beginners is high pop culture.
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Skim the pleasantly diverting surface of Absolute Beginners and you can easily forget that there is nothing contained beneath. [18 Apr 1986, p.C6]
The paradox of this razzle-dazzle movie is that it demonstrates the triumph of the advertising ethos it attacks. Still, it's bold and undeniably different (what other musical turns a race riot into a happy ending?). Under its brassy, celebratory surface it's selling a surprisingly dour message about the waylaid dreams of the teen revolution. [5 May 1986, p.78]
What's left here is not so much a movie as an assault so unpleasant, it leaves you wondering what you could have done to deserve it. [27 May 1986, p.B3]
Aug 29, 2021
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