Blinded By The Boss ★★★½
IT”S been a good run for lovers of music-based films in recent years.
We’ve had Sing Street, La La Land, The Greatest Showman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Wild Rose, Rocketman and Yesterday.
Now it’s the music of Bruce Springsteen that gets the lion’s share of the love in the highly entertaining Blinded By The Light.
This English film, by the director of 2002’s much-loved Bend It Like Beckham, is the most narrative of all these films.
Truth be told, the sequences where characters do break into song and dance are actually the weakest parts of the film.
But The Boss’s music is all-encompassing and used throughout the film as it comes to drive the lead character’s transformation from shy and reserved to outgoing and confident.
Gurinder Chadha’s film is based on a 2007 book by British-Pakistani journalist Sarfraz Manzoor who wrote about his time growing up in Luton during the reign of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and rise of the National Right Movement and impact on his family.
Manzoor discovered Springsteen’s music during this time and the parallels between the lyrics about working class lives in middle America and Britain.
The film is set in 1987 and the Manzoor surrogate is arts student Javed Khan who lives with his parents and sister as they struggle to make ends meet. Javed is alreday starting to rebel against the strict rules and expectations of their culture when his father loses his long-term job and the entire family is expected to pull together in a united future.
At the same time as Javed’s father is criticisng his dreams of becoming a writer, Javed is also trying to find a personal voice that will help him connect with others at school, particularly girls, and stand up for himself against the growing racism in the streets.
His one close friend, Matt, comes from a working class English background and is constantly frustrated by Javed’s lack of confidence. A new classmate, Roops, gives Javed a couple of Springsteen albums one day and tells him they will change his life.
When Javed is at a low ebb he inserts one of the cassettes into his walkman and, as the music builds and lyrics kick in, the overnight impact on the young man is truly life-changing.
In his first major role, Billy Barratt is exceptional as Javed and there is good support all round from Dean-Charles Chapman as Matt, Aaron Phagura as Roops, Kit Reeve as Emma, whom Javed starts a relationship with, Kulvinder Ghir as his father Malik and Nikita Mehta as sister Shazia.
The main strengths of the film and the script and acting. We’ve seen similar journeys in Wild Rose and Yesterday, but there is enough humour and heart in Blinded By The Light to more than hold its own.