Review No.121: Hunky Dory

So it's time to kick into the second half of the year but on the first day of July saw me very sleepy and tired after having a night out on Saturday to celebrate my birthday. Thankfully one of my current LoveFilm discs was a gentle look at the summer of 1976 through the eyes of a bunch of Swansea-based teenagers and their teacher. Hunky Dory stars Minnie Driver as Viv March an idealistic drama teacher who wants to make the annual school productions a little more lively and at the same time tries to inspire her pupils to be more creative. As they have little interest in acting out a Shakespeare play she agrees to litter the play with contemporary musical numbers, primarily David Bowie songs, in order to pique their interest in the production while in addition she tells them that the normal school rules don't apply when they have lessons with her. Obviously her liberal teaching methods don't sit well with her colleagues primarily Haydn Gwynne's snooty social studies teacher, who looks down her noses at most of the working class kids, as well as Steven Spiers' rugby coach who convinces the parents of the boy who plays Prospero to take him out of the play so he can concentrate on his training. Luckily Viv has an ally in Robert Pugh's headmaster who takes over the role of Prospero but at the same time is hesitant to help promote all of her ideas and is shocked to hear how children swearing freely during rehearsals. Alongside the story of the production we get to see a lot of the kids try to navigate their way through their adolescence this includes Davey who is in love with cast mate and ex-girlfriend Stella however she no longer feels the same way about him which is unfortunate as they are playing lovers Ferdinand and Miranda. Other pupils key to the plot include misunderstood skinhead Kenny who is playing Kenny and then there is Tim who struggles with is sexuality. At the end of the day it is up to Viv to unite her squabbling kids as well as to overcome the adversities that lay along the way.

I have to say that Hunky Dory was the perfect film to watch when you're very tired as it is untaxing and ultimately fairly fun if slightly cheesy. The musical numbers are well choreographed and are produced just enough to make them still have some sense of realism in the context of a school production. My personal favourites were Davey's rendition of 'Life on Mars' and the final number in the show which was a full cast production of ELO's Living Things. Minnie Driver, who has been rather absent from the big screen recently, is great as Viv anchoring the films and playing an inspirational schoolteacher who never feels smug or self-satisfying she is also ably supported by the reliable Pugh while several of the younger cast members give good performances. However I found that there was an over-abundance of storylines, including most of those involving the kids themselves, that it was hard to connect to any of them. I would've mainly focused on Aneurin Barnard's Davey who had to deal with the fact that Stella had fallen out of love with him as well as the fact that his younger brother was being bullied at school though I also thought Darren Evans' Kenny's story arc was equally compelling. Where the film dipped was some of the smaller storylines including one member of a band secretly romancing his friends' sister, played by Kimbereley Nixon in a thanklessly small role, as well as the story of Sam's sexuality which should've had more time devoted to it. I do applaud director Marc Evans, who helmed one of my favourite films of all time Snow Cake, for constantly working on differing products and you can see he cares for all of his characters even if there are too many of them here. One thing that confused me was whether or not Hunky Dory was based on a true story as over the end credits Evans informs us what the kids and Viv went on to do it would be interesting to see if this was cold hard fact or indeed if it had been made upOverall I think Evans spreads himself too thin however the film is enjoyable nonetheless thanks to Driver's performance and the musical numbers which were enough to wake me up from my morning-after-the-night-before coma.

Verdict: Too many characters spoil the plot in this otherwise enjoyable, cheesy musical with a great central performance from Driver but due to the scattershot nature of the film I can only give it a respectable 6/10