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Kidulthood
UK 2006
produced by Menhaj Huda, George Isaac, Damian Jones, Marco Costa (executive), Tania Costa (executive), Perre Mascolo (executive), Marcello Moscarello (executive) for Stealth Films, Cipher Films, TMC Films
directed by Menhaj Huda
starring Aml Ameen, Red Madrell, Noel Clarke, Jamie Winstone, Adam Deacon, Femi Oyeniran, Cornell John, Madeleine Fairley, Rebecca Martin, Cornell John, Kate Megowan, Sephen Da Costa, Christopher Villiers, Hannah Miles, Tom Burroughs, Ortis Deley, Nicholas Hoult, Sushil Hunjan, Pierre Mascolo, Ray Panthaki, Rafe Spall, Natalie Wright
written by Noel Clarke, music by The Angel
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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After young Katie (Rebecca Martin) has killed herself for being bullied
a little too heavily by school bully Sam (Noel Clarke), her entire school
gets a day off. Exactly on that day, 15-year-old Trife (Aml Ameen) learns
from his girlfriend Alisa (Red Madrell) that she's pregnant ... and for
some reason he thinks th ebaby is Sam's. So the first thing he does is
gather his two best mates Jay (Adam Deacon) and Moony (Femi Oyeniran) and
go to Sam's appartment and teach him a lesson ... and soon enough, the
trio has beaten him up and stolen his girlfriend Claire (Madeleine
Fairley), who's quite friendly with Jay anyways ...
Eventually though the trio falls out, and Trife, not knowing what to
do, hooks up with his gangster uncle Curtis (Cornell John), who welcomes
him with open arms into his gang - but soon enough makes him carve up a
defenseless man's face. Trife does so but then simply runs away ...
Alisa in the meantime hooks up with her best friend Becky (Jamie
Winstone), and the two girls do a bit of shopping, a bit of drug abuse,
and Becky has a bit of sex as well ... but then again, Becky is a
self-centered bitch, and the two girls fall out as well - which leaves
Alisa sitting on the sidewalk, crying.
In the evening, a friend of the kids is having a big party, and
everybody comes, including Alisa and Trife, and at the party, they for the
first time have the opportunity to talk things over, and Alisa tells Trife
the kid is really his (since she never slept with Sam in the first place)
...
But Sam shows up at the party too - despite an offer by Claire to shag
all night -, and he's out for vengeance, and soon enough he beats Trife to
pulp before Alisa shows some courage and slaps Sam in the face in front of
a big audience and Jay and Moony join up with Trife and give Sam a sound
beating. It seems Sam has been defeated ... but unfortunately his baseball
bat is still within his reach, and a well-placed swing puts Trife out of
action - in fact the swing would eventually prove fatal ...
But before Sam can test his bat on the others as well, Katie's brother
shows up with a gun and threatens to kill him. Only Trife's "he's not
worth it", said with his last breath, eventually saves Sam's life ...
Oh boy.
Another of these films (a bit like Larry Clark's equally failed Kids)
that tries to say something relevant about today's lower class (and
in this film mostly coloured) youth, but in the process is much too busy
recreating authentic youth slang and putting the word fuck into
pretty much every line of dialogue to even begin to realize just how
clichéd the plot of the whole thing is. Beneath all the fancy camerawork,
the hip youth slang and the many expletives, the whole film is nothing but
a tiresome and actually pretty cheesy déja vu-experience: Actually
everything that's in this film has been shown before - not necessarily
better, but that's due to the pretty bad story to begin with and not due
to superior storytelling ...
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