Hunky Dory (2011)
Country: GB
Technical: col 110m
Director: Marc Evans
Cast: Minnie Driver, Aneurin Barnard, Danielle Branch, Robert Pugh
Synopsis:
Working class Swansea, during the hot summer of 76: a drama teacher struggles with hormonal teenagers and reactionary staff to mount a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Review:
The impossibly glamorous, but impeccably accented, Miss Driver rubbing cheek by jowl with refugees from a TV soap drama spiced up with (far too many) f-words, and you have an idea already of the mess that ensues here. Add to that an amorphous script, with no real sense of timescale or shape to the preparations, a too thinly spread story given the number of individual characters (based on real people, which may be why), and no sense at all of the logistics behind a school production: this falls into the reality gap of so many school-based socio-realist dramas before it, one characterised as much by a Hollywood soft-focus aesthetic as by the Full Monty ethos of socialist engagement leavened by incisive humour. Musical numbers based on Bowie and ELO are undeniably uplifting and a reminder of what Welsh kids can achieve.
Country: GB
Technical: col 110m
Director: Marc Evans
Cast: Minnie Driver, Aneurin Barnard, Danielle Branch, Robert Pugh
Synopsis:
Working class Swansea, during the hot summer of 76: a drama teacher struggles with hormonal teenagers and reactionary staff to mount a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Review:
The impossibly glamorous, but impeccably accented, Miss Driver rubbing cheek by jowl with refugees from a TV soap drama spiced up with (far too many) f-words, and you have an idea already of the mess that ensues here. Add to that an amorphous script, with no real sense of timescale or shape to the preparations, a too thinly spread story given the number of individual characters (based on real people, which may be why), and no sense at all of the logistics behind a school production: this falls into the reality gap of so many school-based socio-realist dramas before it, one characterised as much by a Hollywood soft-focus aesthetic as by the Full Monty ethos of socialist engagement leavened by incisive humour. Musical numbers based on Bowie and ELO are undeniably uplifting and a reminder of what Welsh kids can achieve.
Country: GB
Technical: col 110m
Director: Marc Evans
Cast: Minnie Driver, Aneurin Barnard, Danielle Branch, Robert Pugh
Synopsis:
Working class Swansea, during the hot summer of 76: a drama teacher struggles with hormonal teenagers and reactionary staff to mount a musical version of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Review:
The impossibly glamorous, but impeccably accented, Miss Driver rubbing cheek by jowl with refugees from a TV soap drama spiced up with (far too many) f-words, and you have an idea already of the mess that ensues here. Add to that an amorphous script, with no real sense of timescale or shape to the preparations, a too thinly spread story given the number of individual characters (based on real people, which may be why), and no sense at all of the logistics behind a school production: this falls into the reality gap of so many school-based socio-realist dramas before it, one characterised as much by a Hollywood soft-focus aesthetic as by the Full Monty ethos of socialist engagement leavened by incisive humour. Musical numbers based on Bowie and ELO are undeniably uplifting and a reminder of what Welsh kids can achieve.