Sunday, January 10, 2010


As I haul poster tubes and large flat boxes down from the attic, Mr Percival has kindly supplied the following review of the Ian Dury biopic, "Sex and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll"...

"A good film - not a classic, but well worth viewing. It's almost as much the Baxter Dury story (Ian's son - the 6 year old child on the cover of New Boots and Panties) as it is Ian's with the young boy going off the rails whilst supposedly in the care of his father and his father's speed addicted minder.

The film is quite dark and it certainly doesn't make Ian out to be any kind of a hero - "a tricky customer" to use Dury's own words to describe himself. Andy Serkis is great as Ian Dury and Olivia Williams as his wife Betty and Namoie Harris as his girlfriend Denise are also excellent in their roles. Ray Winstone is the ideal choice to play the part of Ian's, rarely seen in every sense, father Billy.

The pressures of life on the road with the commercially unsuccessful Kilburn and the High Roads, combined with living with the after effects of polio, 2 children, a wife as well as a girlfriend with no real income from a music career that took many years before success came, all hit home. The story evolves from the young Ian spending time at specialist schools for the disabled to eventually releasing hit records.

The one potential flaw to the film is that to be able to follow the story line I suspect you do need to have an existing understanding of Ian Dury's life story as there is no attempt to present the events in a chronological sequence. The average film goer is not going to know this story and I'd be intrigued to hear what other people make of it. I suspect it could potentially be seen as a confused mess in the eyes of many. I enjoyed it though."


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Andy Serkis as Ian Dury! Brilliant.