From the first scene, my hopes for this film started to fade. It is abysmally written, knocked together by a grand total of two brain cells. The characters are cliche and uninteresting and without a single layer of depth, the setups predictable and revisited upon us from a millions other films (bedroom alarm clock going off... the bitchy classmates... overhearing someone talk about you in the bathroom... the plot twist..., etc etc ad nauseum), the acting for the most part unbelievable and often cringe. The one ray of light in the acting was Sam Claflin, who makes a tiny appearance but brings something of interest and intrigue. Why he's not become more mainstream over the years, I have no idea. Sure the cinematography is good, but this alone does not make a film. And we expect decent cinematography as standard from modern films given the leaps in digital technology. Nor does banging some old tunes over celluloid make it hip. This film is entirely style over substance, and unfortunately the style doesn't even come close to the style of the era it attempts to recreate.
I'm suspicious of the IMDb rating this film gets. As usual, many one timers popping a rating in. There are 14,000 ratings for this film. This film has made $8 million at the box-office to date. If we assume roughly one in a hundred people rate a film on IMDb and that the average price of a cinema ticket is $15 (probably an underestimate), then this film should have made $21 million. Even if you're generous and give the figures a 30% lag time and account for preview ratings etc, you should still be hitting $15 mil.
Me thinks many of these reviews are fake...
