Reviewed by Mike Martin
Featuring Chris Atkins, Nick Daviesm Max Clifford, Dave Read, Mick Jagger, Rebekah Wade, Arunas Valinskas, Rokas Zilinikas, Donalda Meizelyte, Paul Dacre, Bob Geldof
Written by Chris Atkins
Certification UK 12A
Runtime 103 minutes
Directed by Chris Atkins
Oh dear, what a mess. Chris Atkins’ film takes aim at some very important themes with a bazooka, and manages to miss almost every one of them from point blank range. Our obsession with fame and the dumbing down of society are serious subjects, and there is a strong documentary to be made about them – unfortunately, this is not it.
The problem is Atkins’ method of throwing everything at the screen and hoping some of it sticks. One minute we’re watching a five-year-old American brat making a fool of himself on radio, the next we’re seeing a paparazzi taking a picture of a smiling Mick Jagger entering a London restaurant. What does that prove? Worse – perhaps the biggest sin of all – is that Atkins appears to be suffering from the same affliction of being star-struck as the teenagers he interviews. When he gains entry into Max Clifford’s house he tapes, and inerts into the film, a lengthy sequence of Clifford saying precisely nothing. All this proves is that Clifford is a manipulator – well, that’s his job – and Atkins is all too happy to lap it up.
So much of the film is from the "no shit, Sherlock" school of documentaries. Tabloids like stories about pop stars, TV is a huge consumer of showbiz, PRs are not totally trustworthy, journalists are overworked on deadlines. Who’d have thought. It all starts off promisingly, with a spoof set-up in a mall where parents seem all too happy to sign away their toddlers’ rights for a chance to appear on the telly. That’s hard-hitting, but by the end of the film, where Atkins turns his attention to Bob Geldof, it’s all been forgotten, lost in a blizzard of bad editing and a weird mid-Atlantic feel to the whole thing – we visit America more times in 103 minutes than British Airways.
Incidentally the press notes reveal that Atkins was thrown out of Oxford “for reasons no-one is entirely clear about”. Perhaps for not being able to follow an argument to a logical conclusion without sprawling all over the place. A missed opportunity to investigate a very real problem.