|
|
It Couldn't Happen Here
A desperate search for meaning
1987
Review: September 8, 2005
Director: Jack Bond
Starring: Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe, Joss Ackland, Barbara Windsor, Neil Dickson
Necessary if you're going to watch. But you should probably just not watch.
THE SETUP:
Surreal and pointless succession of images starring the Pet Shop Boys and featuring their music.
DISCUSSION:
I was obsessed with the Pet Shop Boys during college and after, and of course HAD to have a copy of their film when I saw one. I just found it again when looking through a box of videos I had under my bed, and thought it might be time for a re-evaluation, hoping to discover that upon a more mature viewing [and knowing not to expect much in the way of quality] that it might reveal itself as an undiscovered gem with an intriguing gay subtext [the title song is about AIDS hitting London in the 80s]. I was on a desperate search for meaning. And, dear reader, the meaning just isn't there.
The movie begins well-for its first ten seconds-with a slow-motion crawl along a beach where a muscleman and female dancers practice. Neil happens to be there in a tuxedo with a bicycle, which he rides along the boardwalk as the title song plays. He stops to buy a postcard, and the first words of the movie are: "Ever since I was a child, the comic and the hostile seemed to go hand in hand." Neil describes horrific suburban nightmares of his youth as he writes postcards to his mother, including living in a horrible boarding house. At that moment Chris is packing up and leaving a boarding house, and her runs down the boardwalk, pursued at one point by bikers.
The two of them see a group of schoolboys led by a blind preacher [Joss Ackland] who is always droning on about religion. They escape into a circus sideshow where they watch a racy dance to the tune of "It's A Sin." By this time the one and only interesting thing is already apparent; that Neil and Chris will sometimes see themselves as these kids, that they will sometimes stand in for each other, and that all of the other characters will interchange with each other as well. Sound intriguing? It is, but it goes nowhere. It grinds on and on, periodically broken up by songs that are sometimes integrated into the action, sometimes not. By the time you get to the long speeches about the meaning of time, your fast-forward button may be nonfunctional due to overuse.
It seems apparent that you pretty much HAVE to be British to really have any idea what these people are referring to. I am sure that all the stuff about English schoolboys and blind preachers and lusty boarding house owners and obnoxious guys telling jokes all the time has a lot more resonance if you are familiar with the kind of characters they are parodying. I think a lot of this is a reference to Help and A Hard Day's Night, neither of which I've seen but I understand consist of the Beatles essentially walking through a bunch of situations without really becoming involved in them. References, however, do not make for much viewing pleasure.
And by the way, this film provides definitive proof that the lyrics of the Pet Shop Boys' early career to not stand up to poetic spoken word recitation.
It must be said that Joss Ackland deserves special commendation for having the courage to take it over the top and just keep going. What else? The hideous dance to "Rent" is a particular low point, but I suppose will offer a resource to future music video historians. Toward the end, there is a woman hanging around, who seems about to meet the boys, but she keeps missing them? Canny coded message? If it is, there's no evidence here.
I was disappointed. I was hoping for some kind of gay resonance here, and thought we'd get it in the early parts which are all about escaping moribund suburban existences. But like everything else, it goes nowhere. The Pet Shop Boys did some of their most interesting "gay" work before they actually came out, at which point they lost a great deal of their mystery, and everything that had previously been interesting, dark and nuanced, suddenly became overt and dull. I think the video for "West End Girls" is one of the best expressions of a certain gay life around. So I was hoping for more here.
I don't know what else to say. This is an unmitigated disaster. Even the Village People's Can't Stop The Music is better than this.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
No. And if you start inventing reasons why you should see it, or it won't be that bad-that is when you must resist the most.
