Starter for 10

Another film I got from the shop, this one is about a young man going to University during the 1980's.



I don't know if it's a post-modern thing, but it didn't look in the least bit 1980's to me. It just looked like now. Remember, this was immediately after the 1970's, but there was almost no reference to punk or two-tone, nor the miner's strike either, which was very prominent at the time.

Anyone who knows the Southend-on-Sea area will know that it wasn't set there, but probably somewhere like Frinton further on up the coast. Southend doesn't have sea defenses like that and, anyway, is on the estuary, not the coast itself. (Yeah, yeah: picky, picky, picky)

The story was okay, if a little weak, but the characters were engaging. I liked Catherine Tate as his Mum. She's got quite a good line near the end. He's feeling a bit sorry for himself and she says, "It's not the mistake that you made, but what you do afterwards that matters", which I thought was quite good.