Review of Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010) by Mike M — 17 Jun 2011

As with the Joe Meek biopic "Telstar", the faint spectre of mundanity hangs over proceedings: it may be the first musical biopic to adopt bullying as its primary motivating force, and the suspicion persists that this Dury is an extraordinary character in search of a story worth telling.

.. What Whitecross and Serkis's Dury manage to convey is a personality forged in the furnace of pub rock, with its malfunctioning equipment, openly hostile crowds, and terrible sound levels. The film does well by noise, grating noise - the noise that served as a constant in its protagonist's life: screaming kids, crockery-shattering rows, drumkits in front rooms.

You could argue that this raucousness drowns out the quieter, perceptive wit of Dury's lyrics, and the father-son business remains psychologically unconvincing - Baxter and Ian have a more honest relationship than most, while Winstone exists chiefly to mouth maxims such as "never step into a dead man's shoes".

Yet the whole is true to the spirit of its subject in the way it picks itself up and drags itself over the line, kicking up a hell of a racket whenever it's inclined to along the way.