Telstar (15)
Verdict: Music to my ears ****
SOME films are cursed. Others are just unlucky. And then, dear readers, there's Telstar.
It's taken 12 long years for this British pop biopic to make its agonising journey from page to screen.
Everything that could go wrong did- several times over. It all started in 1997 when fading Lock, Stock actor Nick Moran took time out from punching photographers to write a film about Joe Meek, a music mogul nobody gave a stuff about.
None of the studios would touch it with a pole of any length. So Nick drummed up private funding from Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan, a man of such fine taste he's got his hair in a bleached blond man-bob-in 2009.
Various bands, including The Kinks, refused permission for their songs to be used. So Nick recorded sound-alike versions on the cheap-and insisted on casting Con O'Neill, an actor nobody's heard of, in the main role.
There were supporting parts for Ralf Little, nob-a-job frontman of The Darkness Justin Hawkins, and best of all, James Bloody Corden. So all told, you'd be forgiven for thinking it would be a worse car crash than Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder drag-racing at the Nurburgring. But . . . it didn't. It's brilliant.
Meek, the tone-deaf pop producer, turned down Rod Stewart and David Bowie to mastermind the career of one half of Chas and Dave. He's not what you'd call famous. But Meek's story is worth telling, as he was far from mild. The film starts with a manic recording session in his "studio"-a three-storey flat above a handbag shop at 304 Holloway Road, London. The taping equipment's in the kitchen, the band (Corden, Little and Carl Barat of Dirty Pretty Things) are in the lounge, and the backing sing- ers-along with all common sense- are in the khazi.
It's a great opening, crackling with demented, camp energy.
O'Neill is perfect as Meek, and there's superb support from Tom Burke (psychic songwriter Geoff Goddard) and the legend that is Pam Ferris (the long-suffering landlady). Hit follows hit, and Joe's career peaks with Telstar, the first single by a British band to reach No1 on both sides of the Atlantic. Then inevitably, things go sour. Joe makes some bad business decisions ("The Beatles?" he snorts after binning a demo tape. "They're rubbish!"). Telstar royalties get caught up in a lawsuit, and he falls out with his backer Major Wilfrid Banks (Kevin Spacey).
Joe coaxes better performances out of his bands by making them play at gunpoint -a tactic difficult to recommend for any pop group, apart from maybe Boyzone.
And he falls for dim-bulb crooner Heinz (JJ Feild)-aptly named because he's about as talented as a tin of baked beans-at a time when being gay was illegal.
Telstar's far from perfect. It's muddled, histrionic-and some of the Joe-goes-crazy bits near the end are dodgier than that episode of Neighbours with the dog dream.
Yet it does something no other recent music film has done-it takes the passion and energy of great pop music and bottles it-making it required viewing for anyone who cares about British music.
The entire cast (including, painful as it is to admit, Corden and one from The Darkness) are on top form. The era's perfectly recreated in looks and in mood. Even Duffy croaking over the end credits can't wreck it.
It took Nick Moran the best part of 12 years to get this made. And the end result's screamingly energetic, wildly uneven, gay as a goose and at times, utter genius.
As a Joe Meek biopic, it's perfect.
OUT FRIDAY
This article has 3 comments
sorry the KINKS were churlish - this is a great story, and Telstar was phenominal in its day...Pity the movie is not being shown in all CINEMAS. How can I see it in Plymouth on a big screen, I have waited SO long......
By jo wigwam. Posted June 16 2009 at 12:03 PM.
yeah, but just the thought that the unfunny untalented fat-boy Corden is in it puts me right off!
By harry. Posted June 14 2009 at 9:15 PM.
The best thing about it is the Duffy song
By Keith Price. Posted June 14 2009 at 11:47 AM.