Review of Cemetery Junction (2010) by Sam P — 13 Apr 2010

I found this film to be largely deplorable. Cheap, crass, mawkish, evokes the worst kind of sentimentalism. Much in the way Merchant and Gervais' sitcoms liberally sifted through the heart-of-darkness comedic bile of Larry David and Garry Shandling, only to heap a pile of emotional goo onto the proceedings so, too, does 'Cemetery Junction' steal from superior antecedents (most obviously the 'British New Wave' of the late 1950s and early 60s, and 'Rebel Without a Cause' which it ticks off by name - just in case we hadn't noticed) to justify its existence. Only this time the pair's gambit does not pay off: nixing the wit, expressionism and, crucially, anger of 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' and 'Billy Liar' - films which it may resemble in its immediate plot contrivances, but the similarities end there - in favour of an outrageously on-the-nose screenplay where characters exist less as compelling individuals in a compressed narrative than as convenient mouthpieces to verbalise the film's apparent 'message' of small-town suffocation.

What we're left with is a film which, in striving to be affectionate towards recent British history, instead smothers it with a bathetic sensibility; amouting to a patronising and condescending view of the past that essentially amounts to 'Ooh, weren't it quaint back then?' with some 'hilarious' tomfoolery and added sex jokes. 'Mean Streets' was made in 1973, the year 'Cemetery Junction' was set. If you're after a compelling portrait of the frustrations of youth and masculinity, I'd suggest you start there.