Blinded by the Light 2019

In all honesty Blinded by the Light feels very much like a movie where the makers have gone the ‘stock plotline’ shelf and picked out the box labelled ‘rebellious teenager fights parents and expectations to go their own road’ and started from there.

There is nothing in the bare bones of the film you have not seen before. The clash, the seeming end of the main characters dreams, the uplifting ending where everyone changes their point of view overnight (despite being entrenched for the majority of the running time) and the conclusion the works for every main character with smiles and laughs all around.

Blinded by the Light keeps its head about the bland because it approaches this from a different view point. The main characters are British-Pakistanis living in Britain where the National Front would hold marches in Southall and Luton, purely coincidence would say the spiv-like overlords of these ‘organisations’. This is the strong point of the story. It is not the first British-Asian film made but it certainly is one of a small number if we are being honest. Something I have no experience of and no real idea about so having these stories told is interesting and for me enlightening.

Having said this skin-colour and place of family origin in the end always seem to be over-ridden by human nature, the more I see different culture explored in the movies the more I see that we are basically all alike. My Irish-born mother has more in common with Javed’s Pakistan-born mother than she didn’t. This is why more view-points more stories must and should be explored. Always.
The acting is uniformly good with lead Viveik Kalra as Javid and his best friend Roops, Aaron Phagura, having good on-screen chemistry and making the story fun, pleasant and engaging.

Stand-out is Kulvinder Ghir as Javed’s father playing the all-important patriarch Malik, Javed’s dad. A role that no doubt started off in ‘Goodness Gracious Me’ to become a full-fleshed out less comedic character. Incidentally Goodness Gracious Me is giving a beautiful full-on ‘nod’ near the end of the film. Alongside his role and diametrically opposite is Nell Williams as Javed’s middle-class ‘right-on’ green warrior Eliza, who even in my sheltered life in the 80s I recognised. She hit the nail on the head. Hayley Atwell as the sage-like figure is the plot driving force but it is to her credit that she makes this 'pat' role believable.

More confusing to this old western white man’s eyes is the homage to the great Bollywood films made for a market that do not always have regular access to movies, so romance, violence, intrigue, singing and dancing, all fired into the same story. In story about Luton I was not sure if the sudden dancing and singing really fitted properly.

The whole story was clipping along at a fair pace, I seemed to have the hang of it, when suddenly we got some over-the-top dancing and skipping round – including some nice wiggy action from Rob Brydon, not quite sure why or what he was doing in the film but it did not detract.

To my mind it seemed as if the makers were testing the waters with a more Bollywood inspired style-story but just not enough for it to be full on and so for me just enough to be confusing.

Blinded by the Light is light frothy take on what in reality was probably a tough, fraught time in a young man’s life and the UK as a whole. For me this was the biggest weakness, it was neither one thing or the other and did not have the courage of its convictions.

This sounds like I did not enjoy Blinded by the Light but this is far from the truth. Frothy, fun and engaging there is much more to enjoy about the film than not. Engaging, well-acted, characters in a film well-paced with slice of ‘nostalgia’ for people like me who were in their twenties in the 1980s, it is a fun romp, even if there is more of a feeling of split-personality about the story-telling.

This is a fun interesting film and if you are into Springsteen it is a great viewing and it pays to remember The Boss does not allow his music to be used in films much and having already read the book this is based on he was more than happy to allow his lyrics and music to be used. Quite and endorsement.