Weekender

A poor attempt at an edgy film.

The plot wasn't gritty enough to be passed off as a druggy film and with some areas, particularly the acting of a few, felt unrealistic.

A film to have on in the background, nothing more.

I saw this film in the local DVD hire shop and thought 'wow' this looks good acid house music, 1990, the guy out of Eden lake, it should be good. This film could have been amazing,there were too many anachronisms (the phone box, the bank notes, the vehicles that can be seen on the Amsterdam scene and the majority of the soundtrack! notably Nakasaki from 1995 ). The warehouse scenes were poor, no gurners, no sweaters no wide eyed crazy dancers. The costumes could have been better I was expecting acid face t shirts, shell suits, baggy jeans and some curtains or mushroom haircuts. On the plus side I liked Dylan's hair do, the acting was good from the main characters, John the rat and his mob looked the part. younger audiences will probably enjoy this but as someone who was around in 1990 wearing a shell suit and listening to tunes on a Walkman I wanted more.

Weekender follows a couple of young guys in Manchester in 1990. The pair of them are petty thieves but soon realise that they can make some money if they begin organising their own raves. Everything starts out well but serious problems soon complicate things.

Weekender is a likable snapshot of the early 90's when dance music as we now know it was just emerging from the underground. Many people started going along to raves and got loaded on ecstasy. While the movie follows the usual trajectory of ascent and descent, similar to films such as Human Traffic it doesn't have a 'drugs are bad' message. Instead the villains of the piece are local gangsters who turn up on the scene and start controlling things with force. Weekender does look back on those early 90's times with a certain amount of fondness and there is an effective soundtrack of house music to emphasise the sense of time. The music isn't the usual familiar array of well known dance anthems from the time; it goes for a more specific selection of tunes that ravers would have encountered back in the day.

In fairness there isn't anything overly new in Weekender. Its story doesn't really offer up any surprises at all. However, it's a good little movie about an important time in British music history.

(no pills were popped in the watching of this film)

Charming little bit of early 90's nostalgia that deserves far more than the 3 out of 10 currently being offered up by IMDb users.

I can only assume that the people giving this film low ratings were not the people who were partying in the early 90's - if they were they'd be rating it far higher just from the nostalgia perspective.

Great soundtrack that pretty much corresponded chronologically (except for Kendo Nagasaki which was a much later track, but hey its a great track so who's complaining!!).

No where near as dark as Trainspotting and less schmaltzy than Human Traffic this is well worth a watch if you are looking for a trip down memory lane or if you fancy an glimpse of how it was.

I don't think they nailed the drug scene accurately, but its a cool film none the less.

I liked the music and sound track.

I liked the venues and different locations.

The plot was easy to follow and I didn't get bored at all.

Difficult to compete with the original Human Traffic movie but I collect clubbing movies so I can happily add this one to my movies shelf ;-)

I don't really have much more to say about it. i have no idea why I must write 10 lines of review.