29. Suggs - My Life Story; movie review
Cert 15
96 mins
BBFC advice: Contains strong language, sex references, nudity, drug references
I didn't have a skinhead cut and I didn't own Doc Martens but I went to enough Madness gigs in the early 80s to consider myself a nutty boy.
Indeed, I cannot believe it was nearly 40 years ago when I saw them at Tiffany's night club which is now the site of Coventry's central library.
Madness concerts, like many of the day, were notorious for attracting an over-boisterous crowd and, sure enough, a fight broke out in the middle of the floor and we were so near the action that my mate's smart jacket was spattered with blood.
His dad wouldn't believe that he had not been involved and he was grounded.
We were so young and it hadn't occurred to me, until now, that the band were a similar age to us. Indeed, the leader singer, Suggs, is just two years older than me.
And yet he is still singing those great songs and, whenever there's a party, my friends and I still dance to Night Boat To Cairo and Baggy Trousers.
Therefore, it was fascinating to hear of the origination of some of the band's big hits and about Suggs himself in this Julien Temple film.
However, this is not an ordinary biopic - it is a merging of past and present footage with a one-man show during which Suggs tells tales of the past, both distant and recent.
In some ways this technique works - he is an engaging storyteller and his cameos of the hits are worth hearing but it is also slightly frustrating because it forces the movie to jolt around too much.
I have to confess that I was less interested in Suggs' very personal search for his own father and the death of his cat that I was in the Madness era.
It takes nearly half of the film before Suggs gets into Madness and the meeting with Jerry Dammers which precipitated their fame but. from that story onwards ,I was thrust back to a happy place in time.
I laughed four times which was considerably less than those in Suggs's theatre audience (except one girl who remained stony-faced throughout) and this proved to me what I had been thinking from the start of the film - Suggs is a better singer than he is a comedian.
Indeed, he is more effective in a band than he is on his own.
Nevertheless, as a Madness fan, I still found My Life Story well worth watching.
Reasons to watch: if you are a Madness fan
Reasons to avoid: the film's unusual style means it jolts around
Laughs: four
Jumps: none
Vomit: none
Nudity: yes
Overall rating: 7.5/10
The big question: Don't singers get fed up of belting out the same old hits?
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