Starter for 10
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Movie Reviews of Starter for 10
Movie Review: I adore James McAvoy
Summary: 5 Stars
Very sweet and charming film -- a prefect choice for those of us that grew up in the 80s. I cannot wait to see more of James McAvoy.Movie Review: Just what I wanted!
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie was in excellent shape, sealed, and shipped satisfactorily. I would do business with these guys again.Movie Review: A charming, intelligent comedy about growing up
Summary: 4 Stars
From a very young age, Brian Jackson has crammed his mind with facts and knowledge, and now he's off to university for more. But the most important lesson he has to learn is that knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing.
Brian quickly makes a strong impression in academia, especially when he gets onto the school team for University Challenge, the wildly popular quiz show he grew up watching with his father. But the rest of life isn't so easy: Brian falls head-over-heels for his beautiful but self-centered teammate Alice, who leads him on despite having no real interest in intimacy; his mother, now ten years widowed, has found a new lover; he just can't sort out his feelings for Rebecca, a student activist with more than a passing interest in him; his blue-collar mates from home are starting to regard him as a class traitor; and any time he tries to be clever or impulsive, it always goes awry.
James McAvoy, who has already won great critical acclaim for his skills in dramatic roles, shows that he is equally adept in comedy, giving Brian an aw-shucks charm that keeps him loveable despite his penchant for saying exactly the wrong thing. Among the rest of the cast, the two greatest standouts are Benedict Cumberbatch, who steals his every scene as the hilariously snobbish team captain, and the extraordinarily talented Rebecca Hall, who plays Rebecca with such spirit and beauty that you can't help rooting for Brian to come around and realize that she's the one for him. Veteran thespians Charles Dance and Lindsay Duncan have a brilliant cameo as Alice's parents, and Mark Gatiss makes a convicing Bamber Gascoigne (the long-time host of University Challenge, and a real-life icon of British TV).
The script is witty, and gives new twists to the traditional conventions of romantic comedy. The climax on the set of University Challenge, and an earlier scene involving a misguided reference to The Graduate, are particularly well done. I can't help feeling, though, that the movie missed a few good opportunities as well. I understand the need to streamline the story, but I can't help feeling that they streamlined too much: fun characters disappear not long after they're introduced, certain aspects of Brian's schoolyear are mentioned when they should have been shown, and so on.
All the same, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and highly recommend it for any fans of romantic comedy, British film, or movies with cool '80s soundtracks.
Movie Review: upbeat youth comedy
Summary: 4 Stars
"Starter for 10" is a charming coming-of-age comedy set in the Thatcher-era Britain of the mid 1980s. Brian Jackson ("Atonement"'s James McAvoy) is a brainy lad with an insatiable appetite for facts who leaves his home in Essex to attend university in Bristol. Almost immediately, he becomes a member of the school's academic quiz team, falls madly in love with his drop-dead gorgeous teammate, Alice, and catches the eye of an earthy social crusader by the name of Rebecca. Meanwhile, the team prepares for a trivia bowl competition to be broadcast on nationwide TV.
Adapted by David Nicholls from his novel and directed by Tom Vaughan, "Starter for 10" has all the drollery, dryness and wit we've come to expect from the best of British humor. McAvoy exudes a great deal of charisma as the intelligent young man who finds that shedding his lower-class origins and proving his smarts in a university setting is not going to be quite as easy as he thought it would be; and Dominic Cooper, Rebecca Epstein, Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch match him in likeability and appeal. The movie also playfully captures the sights and sounds of the era in which it is set, with crowds of placard-waving young people dressed in "Flashdance" and New Wave-inspired attire protesting everything from apartheid to pollution to nuclear proliferation while synthesizer-laden music pounds away in the background.
But it is as a hilarious and insightful human comedy that the film earns our real attention and affection. And that `80s-infused soundtrack (featuring The Cure and The Psychedelic Furs, among others) may just be the inspiration you need to finally ferret out those long-discarded leg warmers and head bands from the back of your closet.
Movie Review: likeable comedy
Summary: 4 Stars
In the other two movies I've seen him in, James McAvoy has played a character with father issues (even Mr. Tumnus the Narnia faun had a few). Here he's Brian Jackson, a first year university student from a modest background who has always wanted to know "the right answer." To that end, he applies and is accepted to a good university where he joins an intercollegiate quiz team. In record time, he also manages to fulfill the first rule of starting school on your own: that you will make an idiot of yourself with both mind altering substances and people of the opposite gender, not necessarily in that order. He's also not fully processed the death of his father, with whom he used to watch quiz shows, and with whom he never felt he fully connected. Like other movies centering around a quiz show, the plot twist is fairly predictable. But I didn't care because McAvoy is so engaging to watch. I didn't care that the love triangle - will the sexually-naïve young man wind up with the blond bombshell with lots of cleavage or the quirky, politically-active brunette was only a surprise to someone who'd never seen a movie before. I didn't care that they didn't even try to make some of the deus ex machinas remotely plausible ("He got hit by a bus!") Because the characters are actually convincing as university students and not as something dreamt up in a screenwriter's studio. Even the voice over doesn't detract from the offbeat charm.