Gregory's Two Girls

John Gordon Sinclair returns as Gregory Underwood. Bill Forsyth returns as writer/director. Gregory is back at his school now as the awkward English teacher fantasizing about his student Frances. Bel Jordan (Maria Doyle Kennedy) is a co-worker who is throwing herself at him without any success. He's a sofa activist. With his talks as inspiration, Frances and Doug investigates Gregory's former schoolmate Fraser Rowan (Dougray Scott) of exporting electronic torture machines.

I love the original which has an innocent charm and the awkward teenage hormones. Gregory is still obsessed with teen girls despite being 20 years later. It is very off-putting. I'm not even complaining about the disappearance of the love story with Susan although that would be a good sequel. I thought the torture machines idea is absolutely ridiculous. Everything seems wrong and flies in the face of the charming original. Then I surrender to the silly sincerity of the torture machines search. It keeps getting sillier and more sincere at the same time with the arrival of Maddy and her arrogant boyfriend. I had to laugh at the turn. The characters grow on me. Eventually I'm going along with the movie but the final ending pissed me off. It is the pettiest of vandalism and I was expecting the torture machine in the back of the truck. This is quite a step down from the original.

By no means his best film, and by no means comparable to the original (how could it be, the original is a gem) - but still an enjoyable romp. The original hit movie, Gregory's Girl, oozed pubescent romance and bittersweet comedy.

But the long-awaited sequel starts with a dream sex sequence between a male teacher and his 15-year-old pupil in the school's shower block while the headmaster and police batter on the door.

The actor John Gordon Sinclair, who played gawky but charming Gregory in the first film, plays a Gregory who has become a 35-year-old teacher with a passion for schoolgirls. This in itself will be enough for many self-appointed moral watchdogs to condemn the film out-of-hand - they are the same people who tried to claim Lolita was a dog before anyone had even seen it. Yawn, snore... this kind of rent-a-gob puritan "outrage" looks so stupid from countries like Spain or Holland where a fifteeen year-old is several years over the age-of-consent.

This is indeed a funny film, in the politically-incorrect mould pioneered by several recent USA films. That's not to say it's a good film - but it's not bad either, and if you suspend disbelief (hey, you did it for Star Wars Episode 1 :) then it is at least very funny in parts - it's just that those parts don't hang together very well.

And it is shocking too, especially to the frosty English looking for another fix of comforting adolescent nostalgia. Liz Lochhead, the poet and playwright, said of seeing an early cut of Gregory's 2 Girls. "It does shock you. You go, 'Oh my God, what is going on here?' But it's a dream and that makes you laugh. The film is, of course, about that - it's definitely about Gregory's forbidden desires - but I think that's wonderful... The whole film is about him trying to run away from his own desires. It has big sweeping things to say about Scotland. It's an immensely sad and painful film too, but very, very funny. I think the best word to describe the film is sore."

According to one insider, an early script of Gregory's 2 Girls had several sex scenes, including the opening fantasy and a later sequence in which Gregory and the schoolgirl consummate their relationship. He said the script made a point of stressing that the girl was underage. The girl is played by a 16-year-old actress, Carly Mackinnon. Certainly very topical in Jack Straw's New-Labour hang'em!flog'em! 'we-will-rule-for-100-years' Britain, in which such teacher/teen-pupil relationships are daily fodder for Puritanical comment.

Bill Forsyth, the director who also made the original Gregory's Girl 20 years ago, has understandably refused to talk to the media since starting work on the film, which was reportedly fraught with difficulties and personality clashes, and went over budget and over schedule.

In June 1996, Forsyth submitted the script of his Gregory's Girl sequel to the Scottish Film Production Fund (SFPF) with a view to securing lottery funding. The fund turned him down and then 'withheld judgment' on the application. Sources say the film's subject matter was deemed "indecent" and the SFPF allegedly feared 'being crucified' in the tabloid press. This decision was later overruled by the Scottish Arts Council, who held final say on lottery funds, which instructed that Gregory's 2 Girls be awarded 1m, supplementing the 2m invested by Channel 4. Shooting finished in July 1998 and the film premiered at the 1999 Edinburgh Festival in August 1999, then at BAFTA in London in September 1999. For those wondering, the original film, made almost 20 years ago, became a classic for its innocent charm and offbeat sense of humour, and launched the career of Bill Forsyth who went on to direct such low-key classics as Local Hero. It's a pity he didn't try for a more low key piece instead of going for a A Fish Called Wanda style comedy-romp. It's as if the climate of the times caused him to shy away from dealing sensitively and humourously with a love relationship between a teacher and a schoolgirl.

A shift in outlook is neccesary to enjoy modern British films, one that somehow allows them to be seen in their own right and for their own qualities rather than by the criteria that American films are judged. Britfilm has to try hard to be gritty and finds it hard to make it, but at warmth British films can lord it over their otherwise overwhelming competitor.

This film fails not in its content but only in attaching itself to the predeccesor, so allowing it to be all to easily seen as the work of star and director somewhere near the end of their tethers. It's a couple of decades later, Gregory teaching and this time with two girls on his mind. He teaches at his school railing against human rights abuses. When students he's fired up find abuses in their midst he must face whether he's just all talk.

This is a subversive film in that there's not the usual worldly character of any American movie that you expect to do whatever he does, but a naive man boy who may still put everything on the line for principles. Maybe. It's certainly no protest-by-numbers though, being too warm. Where U.S. film may seem realistic because they're urban and gritty, this and other British films of recent years - those that don't try to match America for visceral thrills - are real because British humour reveals truths.

This film is a travesty, and isn't fit to keep company with the superior original. The plot is an absolute mess, and the film is way too long. Everytime they're struggling, they desperately inject a sentimental reminder from the first film.

"Gregory's Girl" is one of the top 10 British films of all time, this one is awful.

He COULD never end a movie well...they always came to a grinding, heart-deadening halt.

But we forgive, given the actors, the characters, unselfconscious dialogue and charming natural feel. The wealth of talent from the Scottish theatre groups at the time.

The unsatisfactory phone box or Caracas sign marked a depressing end to otherwise enjoyable movies.

The original Gregory's Girl outpaced The Clash of the Titans. Perhaps deservedly so, but that movie had a structure...and a proper ending.

I think the fact that the deadening halt came quite early in this movie reveals its quality. Which is a shame given the quality of the actors. I believe Carly McKinnon stopped acting after this - I wish her well in Toronto - but she had that natural feel from earlier films and the makings of a very fine performer.

Add to this the uncomfortable - and uncomfortable in the 80s - creepiness of some of the themes and I don't think we have a winner here.

That, and the approaching-the-original "Weather Report on Diazepam" soundtrack, left me feeling entirely empty.