God Help the Girl

What's not to like about this twee movie? The story is the songs brought to life by the twee singers themselves. I found the film charming and naive.

Eve, James, and Cassie seem to have way too much time on their hands. Eve, (with an eating problem) is in and out of a clinic and finds writing songs helps her emotionally. Eve, James, and Cassie are all musically oriented, so they form a band. Eve, gets a big break and off to London she goes.

This is just simple young people living the dream, and we get to watch their happiness, confusion, pain. They are very much 'in season' for their age and tomorrow it will be different for them. And you get to hear some pretty good songs! Stuart Murdoch kept it a consistent format.

God Help the Girl is a very unusual film because it is like combining an old fashioned musical with a modern angst-ridden coming of age movie. The overall results are extremely enjoyable and I was surprised that this hip film still appealed to a tragically un-hip old fogy like me!

Emily Browning plays Eve, an exceptionally depressed anorexic young woman who has been getting in-patient treatment for her illness. However, she disappears one day and soon meets a very nerdy looking guy, James. They are later joined by James' friend, Cassie, and the trio decide to form a band. Now this isn't the normal sort of indie/hipster band and the trio find that they actually have a really great sound (I was very impressed by the singing). What's next? See the film.

Throughout the movie, Eve breaks into song and the film has little surreal breaks during which the lyrics tell about her life and inner struggles. While Gene Kelly or Dick Powell might have done this during the golden days of Hollywood back of yesteryear, this is not something you'll see in films today. This gives the movie uniqueness. This, combined with the real likability of the quirky characters, gives the movie a charm that make it impossible to dislike. Try it yourself...I think you'll probably feel the same. And, you might just find yourself singing along with Eve or breaking into song yourself after the movie has ended.

A movie about a young woman with an eating disorder trying to deal with the real life and using music.

It is a pretty nice idea. The movie doesn't really have much depth though. We don't really know much about characters and don't see them develop very far. It is just a little episode of their lives when they were talking about making a band.

The reason why it isn't a very deep movie is probably because it is a musical. There is more focus on the songs than on the characters and their personalities and stories. My problem in this case that I am not a fan of this kind of music. The songs had a pleasant sound to them but they all sounded kind of the same. Their performance was also not very exciting. Emily Browning was a great singer but there was nothing happening during the songs. Just some walking or sitting in a tub. The only song that stood out for me was the one they performed at the retirement home. This is probably because it was the one performance that seemed to have real energy and character.

Still the movie was not bad. I think what helped a lot were the visuals. The style and the settings were beautiful. My favorite part of the movie was them kayaking. Mainly because of the gorgeous scenery.

Having read the reviews, I wasn't really sure what to expect when I began seeing GHTG. I should say that I have been a B&S fan since 1997 or 1998 when I discovered "If you're feeling sinister" and I have all their releases up until 1998 as well as the debut album of Gentle Waves. Their music has really influenced me as a person and I really was curious of what a film based on their songs would look like.

I felt happy watching GHTG but it was also really emotional. Being in my mid-30s it reminded me of my dreams as a teenager and I began asking myself if there's still time to accomplish them. I strongly identified with the character of James and his search for the perfect moment, which makes it impossible to enjoy life. I recognized Eve in the many talented, self-destructive, impulsive people I have met in my life and all the opportunities I had to make my life a little more interesting.

GHTG is full of color. The characters dress up in all kinds of costumes, and yes it is unrealistic but I think what many fail to realize is that our fondest memories are usually very different than what we really experienced. Everything is more colorful and stylish in our memories, like a Belle and Sebastian album cover.

I had read that there is no plot to the movie, but I don't agree at all. I think both Eve and James are wonderfully developed characters and Cassie is also an interesting character whose presence makes the story better. And the music is also wonderful. I was very pleased with Emily Browning's singing performance. She not only has a great voice but she also seemed to be really invested in the songs which made her character more believable.

I loved the film's bittersweet ending as well as the many funny and awkward moments (James fighting his drummer, James and Eve showing up at Cassie's house or the drunk Scottish boys whose accent Cassie couldn't understand). This may not be a film for everyone, but I think the world would be a better place if more people listened to Belle & Sebastian and all I can do is thank Stuart Murdoch, the actors and everyone else involved in making this film.

There was a lot to like about God Help the Girl but despite a few good individual scenes, but it didn't flow together as a story that well. Maybe writer/director Stuart Murdoch needed more creative feedback and better editors than he got. Certain scenes and characters just show up out of nowhere with little connection to the rest of the story, like the WTF scene of Eve going on a bender with some girl we never see before or since. The main character of Eve was weakly written. Her past and her motivations were vague. The movie would have been far better with James and Cassie as main characters and Eve as a side character.

You could see God Help The Girl as a culmination of Belle & Sebastian's (a band named after a fictional band that Murdoch's songwriting centered on) characters and themes spanning their nearly 20 years as a band. James, Cassie and Eve seem derived from the archetypal characters from B&S's songs. The movie though develops them in a shallow and haphazard way that doesn't really do justice to the insights and characters brilliantly explored in the individual songs. I think Murdoch could make a good movie, but God Help The Girl was just so-so. The music was excellent at least.