Gregory's Girl

There is only one thing negative I could say about Gregory's Girl...it makes you sad that the innocence of first love and first dates is gone forever, and also makes me wish my school had been as cool as Gregory's. Excellent performances by all and sundry, no attempts to sacrifice realism for laughs and Clare Grogan at her prettiest. Special mention must be given to the music, wonderfully twee and with a kind of nostalgic delight. Only Bill Forsyth seems able to avoid mawkishness yet still make utterly inoffensive and delectable movies. One of my top ten favourite films and one I never stop enjoying.

Gregory's Girl is written and directed by Bill Forsyth. It stars John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn and Clare Grogan. Music is scored by Colin Tully and cinematography by Michael Coulter.

The perils of school day love get the once over by Forsyth in a film that oozes simplicity of charm and understated warmth. Plot focuses on gawky teenager Gregory (J G Sinclair) who becomes infatuated by the latest addition to the school's football team, Dorothy! (Hepburn). As imbalanced hormones rage and awkwardness takes a hold, Gregory lunges from one sequence to another not getting any help from his equally awkward pals. Everyone, it seems, has their own quirky issues, while Forsyth drops in some delightfully off kilter touches to further emphasise the roller coaster ride of puppy love.

Performances are nailed on perfect. Sinclair proves adroit at physical comedy, his portrayal of shyness and yearning a real treat. Hepburn is deliberately coy as Dorothy, her athleticism to be applauded, and future Altered Images popstrel Grogan leaves a telling mark as the sexy joker in the pack. But it's Allison Forster as Gregory's kid sister Madeline who really is the surprise, precocious and deftly etched into the narrative, it's a key girl role that in young Foster's hands bridges the link between Gregory's emotional chaos and mental happiness.

Irresistible and enchanting movie. 8/10

I've caught this movie a few times playing on Stars in the states, and there is something indescribably charming about it. Maybe I'm biased because I've always loved British movies and television shows, but I found this movie very cute. The story is nothing big and dramatic, just a boy liking a girl and learning a bit about himself and about love in general in the end. The lead character of Gregory is very convincing and very real, you like him but at the same time you can't help wincing a bit at his awkwardness, especially in the scene where he's helping Dorothy out in football by playing goalie. I find this movie very refreshing when compared to teen comedies that are being made nowadays. Gregory's Girl has a realness and innocence to it that is severely lacking in Hollywood now.

And also thanks to whoever posted that the US version had the Scottish accents dubbed. I always noticed there was something "off" about the voices, especially the younger kids and now I see why. I hope someday I can see a copy with the original voices intact.

Watching 'Gregory's Girl' for the first time in over two decades, one is immediately struck by reminders of when it was made: the grainy film, the dreadful soundtrack, the big hair of both its male and female characters. But one is soon also reminded of why it proved such a massive hit, in spite of it's low budget, unpretentious nature. For at its heart, Bill Forsyth's film captures two eternal realities, the (potentially charming) essential uselessness of a certain sort of teenage male, and the particular uselessness of just about all males when confronted by a sufficiently pretty girl (Dee Hepburn, although Clare Grogan, later a pop star, appears in a secondary role). But the gentle narrative eschews the obvious cliché, and it's also nice to see a story set in a Scottish housing scheme that isn't just a tale of drugs and A.I.D.S. It still feels funny and true after almost thirty years.

A lot of so called comedies get one or two big laughs in the whole film, often by reaching down for a reference to one or another substance that comes from the human body. Gregory's Girl makes me laugh every few seconds, and the only mention of a bodily excretion I can remember is Andy's "chat up line" in the school cafeteria: "Did you know that when you sneeze, it comes out of your nose at a 100 miles an hour?" Even though I thought I knew all the funny bits after seeing it so many times, each viewing finds me laughing at things I hadn't noticed before, as well as at all the other bits that never seem to grow stale.

There's the occasional Pythonesque line, as the football coach's description of the "two basic skills" of a goal scorer: "Ball control, shooting accuracy, and the ability to read the game." But Forsyth the writer creates a constant stream of little gems that are very much his own style of wry humour, taking real life and stretching it just that little bit further, but not so far that it's no longer recognisable. He's got teenage life down perfectly. Girls talk, plan, and seem to know what they want. Guys are clueless. Guys are obsessed by numbers. But girls know all the best ones.

It's fun to see how comic setups and situations from Gregory's Girl come back in Forsyth's Local Hero ("everyone's second favourite film", as Mark Kermode put it), deeper and more fully developed.

Despite the dated fashions and soundtrack, highly recommended.