CREATION STORIES
FILM
OUT 20 MARCH SKY CINEMA/NOW TV
Between its Icarus arc and core creatives, this biopic of Creation Records co-founder Alan McGee sets out its stall between Trainspotting and 24 Hour Party People. It also sets itself up for a fall. Even with exec producer Danny Boyle, co-writer Irvine Welsh and lead Ewen Bremner on hand, director Nick Moran’s picaresque romp falls short of its promise, landing in a mess of pop-culture collage and pie-eyed ’90s nostalgia.
Admittedly, Bremner brings brio to McGee, a Glasgow dreamer shaped by first Bowie, then the Pistols. But Welsh and Dean Cavanagh’s script navigates these checkpoints with so much life-draining reliance on voiceover, it’s like watching an audiobook of McGee’s memoir with pictures. You wonder when the film is going to start - which it finally does as a pill-powered McGee hits London and co-sires the label behind MBV, Primal Scream, Oasis…
As recreated band (and politician) encounters fly by panto-style, McGee’s
character is spread thin, with scant back-up from supports sketchier than an Oasis lyric. Like an Irvine Welsh playlist, the script brims with druggy highs/lows and “Choose life”-ish “Be this/that” monologues. Everything is lobbed at the (wonder)wall in the hope of something sticking, except the detail and feeling needed to trick you into thinking you haven’t heard it all before. The soundtrack is on point, but in Creation terms, the film is more Be Here Now than Screamadelica: under-focused, over-indulgent. Kevin Harley