G

If you like the fashion and the music of the 80's, you'll love G! It doesn't get more 80's than this.

Another reason to see this movie is Olle Ljungströms great synth cover on Velvet Underground's "Venus in furs" (written by Lou Reed). It's fantastic!

G stands for 'gemenskap', which is Swedish for fellowship, the feeling of togetherness. This is the message of the movie - together we can help each other stay on the right path. Cute, but not exactly revolutionary news - not to mention its omitting of how difficult it actually is to feel togetherness, when things get complicated.

But in this movie, nothing is allowed to get complicated. We meet a few teens with very teenish problems, in their most over-simplified form, and see how they first succumb to different kinds of temptation, but later - yes, with the help of each other - manage to get free of them. It's all as easy as bread-in-a-box.

Of course, such simplified dilemmas and solutions function only with a moral which is just as simple - and it needs to be intolerant and conformist. Silly, too.

The film was a huge hit with teens, when first released - although it tried to teach them to 'stay in school' in every way. Critics despised it, for good reasons. Now, time has kindly been transporting it toward oblivion.

But one anomaly remains to be considered with this movie: With such an uncool moral oozing from it, how could it be a hit with the kids? Was it because the adult world expressed its contempt for it? That, teens can always relate to.

I gave this movie a 10, just because it is so bad that seems it was shot like that in purpose. A hidden gem in horrible movies. So glad I watched it!

Being Swedish, I believe I should review more native pictures. I tend to refrain from watching them, but I saw this one. It's actually a true gem from my college years.

It's a pretentious attempt at some kind of a prescriptive documentary. Probably an original Scandinavian genre, no doubt.

Despite obvious shortcomings, it's immensely entertaining, mostly due to the soundtrack, and due to some of the acting efforts. The almost iconic singer Magnus Uggla plays a formidable cliché type gay. His tête-à-tête chats with the pretty lead are so unnatural, they seem simply to be badly cut.

The director was infamous for his private relations with the young actors of his pictures.

A minor and peculiar detail: the fictive punk band of this picture is called "Barn" which means "Child(ren)". There is a poster showing the name written with a reversed capital "R" (= the Russian letter "ya"): "BAЯN". This could have been a neat hint to the band Korn's logo "KoЯn", if it wasn't for the fact that Korn was formed ten years after this movie...

being 15 now is not very different to being 15 20 years ago. always the same struggles... from what I understand, this movie was a great success in sweden when it came out [most memorable for Magnus Uggla's excentric character]and kids rushed to see it. if I dare, I might compare this movie to lukas moodyssons 'fucking åmål'.

it is not great, but it's a really good teenmovie.