November 7, 2022

David Essex is quite natural looking here, as he develops his "Jim MacLaine" character established in "That'll Be The Day" (1973). Playing the odd gig here and there with his band "The Stray Cats", their roadie "Mike" (Adam Faith) manages to get them an audition with a producer. He takes a bit of a shine to them but changes the dynamic replacing the band leader "Johnny" (Paul Nicholas) with "MacLaine". Any sense of disappointment and rivalry is s… read the rest.

David Essex is quite natural looking here, as he develops his "Jim MacLaine" character established in "That'll Be The Day" (1973). Playing the odd gig here and there with his band "The Stray Cats", their roadie "Mike" (Adam Faith) manages to get them an audition with a producer. He takes a bit of a shine to them but changes the dynamic replacing the band leader "Johnny" (Paul Nicholas) with "MacLaine". Any sense of disappointment and rivalry is soon overcome - on the surface, anyway though, as the band go from strength to strength. Eventually they come to the attention of American "Porter Lee Austin" (Larry Hagman) who does a sort of Col. Tom Parker on the man, isolating him and whilst increasing his celebrity and wealth, he also exacerbates the increasing feelings of loneliness and shallowness faced by the star who thrives on the oxygen of fame but cannot readily handle it. Retreating, eventually, to a Moorish castle in Spain, it falls to "Mike" to try and keep his charge from imploding. It is not a great film this - the musical numbers are weak and rather poorly staged. That said, though, it is still a rather potent biopic of a man who became an industry for lots of venal hangers-on who cared not a jot for "MacLaine" so long as he was delivering their meal tickets. Hagman is rather good as the manipulative manager and Faith has some skill depicting the loyal, frequently fed up, friend there to constantly try to pick up the pieces. The ending does let it down a bit - I felt it was something of a cop out - but in the round it is still quite an interesting look at how money, hedonism and a good old dose of human nature can turns rags to riches to rags with no great thought, or effort!

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