Quadrophenia (1979)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

A Major Disappointment

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

From the creator of Masterchef, here is something Franc Roddam made earlier. A film about being young in the 1960s being part of the Mod subculture and alienation and angst with some good tunes and a lot of future cast members of Eastenders if The Bill had not go to them first. Phil Daniels gives a career defining performance that should had got an Oscar nomination as Jimmy who has a mundane job , boring home life with parents who do not understand him and lives for the weekend clubbing with friends, popping pills and getting into scrapes with his mates.Jimmy and his friends go off to a bank holiday weekend in Brighton, he wants to get close with girlfriend Lesley Ash, in awe to cool dude Sting and gets in a rumble with greasers.However Jimmy gets more disillusioned losing his job, friends and family. Seeing Sting as just an ordinary bell boy sends him to the edge.The film quickly became a cult classic, This Who produced film led to the revival of the late 1970s & early 1980s mod scene. It has some cool tracks, a lot of humour, earthy language and a cast of now familiar actors. In a sense its like a British version of Saturday Night Fever and director Franc Roddam gives this drama a sense of rawness and some vitality when you see the action scenes in Brighton.

Quadrophenia is one of the best films i have ever seen. As me and my family are MODs we love this film. I am only 15 and when i first watched this film it instantly went to the top of my favorite films list. I own over 350 films and counting and this film is the top of my list. In my opinion you need to be a MOD or have an understanding of the concept of MODs and Rockers to fully appreciate this film. The film follows on the Who's 1973 album Quadrophenia which tells the story of Jimmy, a young MOD popping pills and out with his scooter riding mates. Phil Daniels gives a powerful performance as Jimmy with Sting as the Ace Face, the MOD who Jimmy idolized until he finds he is nothing but a bell boy in a hotel and is a nobody. In my opinion the end scene with Jimmy on the ace faces Vespa riding across the cliffs of Brighton with the Who's song I've had enough playing. This is one of the most powerful scenes in film history and i absolutely love it. Love, Reign o'er me. 10 stars out of 10 easy.

Quadrophenia (1979)*** (out of 4)The Who's 1973 rock opera was turned into a feature film and centers on Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a teenager in the U.K. who deals with a wide range of issues but most of them surrounding growing up in the era. QUADROPHENIA, the album, is considered one of the band's greatest as well as one of the greatest ever made. I never was a big fan of the film TOMMY but I found this one here to be much better overall. I think the greatest thing going for this film is the soundtrack, which not only includes The Who songs from this album but we also get some of their older material (a memorable bit on My Generation) as well as songs from other artists. This soundtracks is certainly something terrific and The Who songs are put to good use here. Another thing working well is the performance of Daniels who perfectly nails this troubled character. I thought he was extremely believable from the start to the finish as he perfectly nailed the various emotions that this teenager is going through. I thought he was especially good towards the end once the guy starts to finally have a breakdown. Leslie Ash is also very cute and charming in her supporting bit. Director Franc Roddam doesn't add too much style to the picture but I found this to be a good thing. What the director does a great job with is the rawness of the picture. It almost feels as if you're watching a documentary on a real group of people because the look and feel of the picture are so on the mark.

I'm almost finished reading Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am" and have been listening a lot to the Who's original double album of the same name so the time was right to finally watch the big-screen dramatisation of the record. I'm just a bit too young to remember anything about the vicious Mods v Rockers pitched battles at Brighton or the Mod lifestyle (I'm not sure just how far north it made it up to Scotland, it always seemed to me principally a London-based movement).Nevertheless, the broader themes in the film of the generation gap between teenagers and their parents, the pain of rejection, youthful revolt against authority plus the less intellectual need for young kids to get drunk, drugged, violent and sexed up are universal and seemingly constant, which with the background of great 60's music, made for an engrossing and enjoyable if occasionally challenging watch.This is Phil Daniel's Jimmy Fenton's worm's eye-view of life in the mid-60's, working in a dead-end job, out of touch with his parents and although on the face of it, there doesn't appear to be much to rebel against, sure enough, he loses his way and his mind as he suffers rejection from his employer, said parents, would-be girlfriend Leslie Ash and after seeing his Mod Hero '"ace-face" played by Sting, meekly conform to society mores carrying bags at a hotel, he gets pushed over the edge (literally). His only way out of the tormenting feelings he's experiencing for the first time sadly involve just a one-way ticket.The film adopts a realistic, warts and all approach, with no let-up in the levels of bad language used, scenes of drug use (although it is "only" pill-popping "uppers" or "blues" as they're called in the film) and of course the centre-piece of the film, the recreation of the infamous Mods and Rockers "Battle Of Brighton" of 1965. There's some earthy humour though to leaven things, particularly two Mods encounter in the dark with a bunch of sleeping rockers, although one or two stray elements of sentimentality (Jimmy's heart-to- heart with his long-suffering dad, his friendship with an old pal turned rocker) slightly jar. Fan as I am, I could have done too without the too obvious genuflecting to the film's producers The Who (Jimmy putting on the "My Generation" single at a party, then gazing in awe at the band on "Ready Steady Go"), I guess he who pays the piper and all that.Central to the movie is a superb performance by Daniels as Jimmy, his mood-swings oscillating violently as he takes or comes off his pills, wired to the moon as we say today. His energy and vividness set the tone for the whole film. Interestingly director Franc Roddam (later the creator of "Auf Weidersehn Pet" and, ...er "Masterchef" on TV), changes the ending and placement of songs from the album, but there's no denying the memorable climax to the piece.In the end I was transported not only back into the era depicted, but more importantly into the head of "helpless dancer" Jimmy and would state that the movie well complements the great album The Who originally released, a rarity in "rock" movies.