Review of Adulthood (2008) by Rob Y — 01 Oct 2009

Noel Clarke's first film, Kidulthood, was quite good. It laid bare the horrid truths of being in a London gang, while simultaneously creating flawed yet likeable characters who were worthy enough to carry the story. Most importantly, unlike most gangster films, it did not glamourous a gang lifestyle, nor include gratuitous sex or violence. It was strangely innocent, and honest.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of Clarke's follow-up, Adulthood. The director/writer/actor is clearly not the talent that everyone wishes him to be, and while he attempts to inject life into his film with a few Guy Ritchie-isms (with varied success), his film is unoriginal, poorly acted, poorly scripted and strangely lifeless for a film with so much violence in. Every character is a cliché, from the Etonian pot-smoker (who, for the record, actually says the line "For Godsake show them the titties!" I despair.) to the rest of the degenerate children who run the show, spending most of the film getting angry for no reason and hitting each other.

The angry tone of the film must have rubbed off on me, as I spent most of the 100 minute running time feeling very annoyed. There's too much shouting, too many lame insults, and too many shots of Noel Clarke broodingly pulling up his hoody as if he's in his own Grand Theft Auto spin-off. The scene that really got to me however, was a scene in which a recently released-from-prison Sam (Clarke) has a knife to some garden variety chav of the dickhead genus, and what follows should be a tense moment. Will he do it? Has he learnt his lesson? Is killing, after all, worth the measly six years away? So, with much deliberation, he puts down the knife. Finally, I think to myself, a positive message can be drawn from this nonsense! And then, he decks the guy. Brilliant. What a fantastic message for our children. Don't kill your enemies, just hurt them enough so that you feel like more of a man. What a disgustingly awful piece of poo poo.

Adulthood is the kind of film that thinks it is saying a lot, but actually is so predictable it borders on the mundane. When not even the guy who's decided to give up the gangster life to study law is a likeable character, you know your film has problems. Worst performance here however goes to Adam Deacon as Jay, who is more infuriating to watch than Spencer and Heidi Pratt. He spends the whole film acting like an angry young boy who should be sat on the naughty step. Oh yeah, I forgot. He's meant to be in his 20s.

The title of the film therefore is misleading, because every aspect of this sequal is more immature than its predecessor. The characters are infantile cavemen, the action sequences are dull and the film builds up to a climax which kind of hisses a little bit and then lets out a weak little burp.

If this is Adulthood, then I'm taking a leaf out of Peter Pan's book.

Rob's Rating: *.