Absolute Beginners

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. Read full review

It remains an engaging, energetic film. [22 Jan 1987, p.9B]

A visually inventive and energetic pop musical. Read full review

While it embraces many of the conventions of the movie- musical, Absolute Beginners overcomes the ready cliches with the crackling energy of jazz and youth. Both Kensit and O'Connell catch the rhythm of their personas early on, riding Temple's roller-coaster tale with care thrown to the wind. They careen off the brainless characters and the hard-knocks facts of life with a "who cares" resilience, never missing a beat in their quest for experience. [4 June 1986, p.D5]

A mixed success, but an exhilarating try. Read full review

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. Read full review

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]

A general disappointment, but then with David Bowie and Patsy Kensit what did you expect. Read full review

Camp is everywhere, humour thin; and the soundtrack is very contemporary for a movie which in the pre-publicity boasted of its jazz origins. The whole film is an example of the strange influence of pop promo mentality on cinema. All that noise, all that energy, so little governing thought. Read full review

Stripped of absolutely everything Absolute Beginners has borrowed from absolutely everything else, the entire film would fit absolutely snugly into a cockroach's shoe. [19 Apr 1986]

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]