There's footage from their peak where the Goss twins are surrounded by 100s of screaming girls, plus the one boy. Him being quite the unexpected fan as boys, including 10 year old me, absolutely did NOT like Bros. However, as an adult, I do find myself revisiting stories from my early years that I was too young at the time to fully comprehend, and I watched 'After' wanting to know how the biggest phenomena of 1988 fell out of favour so quick.
'After' follows the Goss Bros reuniting for their first performance together since their initial split, and the doc follows the preparation for their comeback gig (at the London 02 Arena no less), interspersed with archive footage and the brothers looking back at their childhood and the peak years of their success.
Within the first 10 minutes, Matt is giving us a tour of his home, showing us, completely irony free, a commissioned painting of his bulldog with a pint of beer. There seems to be little change from their 80s selves, ludicrous with no apparant sense of self-awareness, but this is actually what makes the film a hugely entertaining watch, for the fan and non-fan. The prize quotes from the film and have been plastered all round the internet, so I don't need to repeat them here - there are some real laugh out loud moments, and I'm left thinking that the brothers are in on the joke but they won't show any cracks in their facade.
My bigger disappointment in the film was that there is little insight into their decline. They had a hugely successful first year, followed by a more muted comeback in 1989, and a barely noticed third clutch of singles and an album in 1991. There was the departure of Craig Logan (the rumour mill at the time suggested the boys kicked him out, not true), mockery and hostility from the press, competition by way of Jason Donovan and New Kids On The Block, and no especially memorable songs after 'I Owe You Nothing' and 'When Will I Be Famous'. They touch on Luke quitting, their financial troubles, and the stress of the sheer venom unleashed upon them, however, by the end of the film, I was left non the wiser as at the start - what actually happened?
As the boys arrive at the airport, they receive an enthusiastic and emotional greeting from the grown-up Brosettes, showing that 30 years later, they still mean a great deal to some of their fans. These same fans would wait all day outside the family house in Peckham for a glimpse of the twins - a major intrusion into their personal lives - but they (and their mother) took it well, happy to go outside hug fans and give autographs, whilst other stars would hide behind their bodyguards. This invites cynics like me to want the twins to deliver a knockout comeback performance, whilst the decades apart from each other in a studio has not softened their clashing personalities, and we're left wondering if the twins reunion will indeed lead to destruction or the genesis of new beginnings.
For a fan, this naturally is a must, but there is plenty of reasons for the non-fan to watch. And to imagine they nearly called themselves Caviar...
