Review for The Story of F***

Introduction

Manufactured pop bands.

TV shows about manufactured pop bands.

Britain's Got Talent (it has, but it's found elsewhere generally).

The X Factor.

Fame Academy.

Popstars.

Popstars - The Rivals.

I hate all of these things. Perhaps that makes me some kind of cultural snob (I'd like to think not, but you're entitled to your informed opinion!)

So the chance to watch "a snappy satire about the music industry...featuring sex, drugs, alien abduction and crocodiles" was too good to miss.

Video and Audio

1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that does exactly what it says on the tin. There's no award-winning cinematography here, just a cinematographer trying to make a foreign country look like London, but then forgetting to get some fake plates for the cars, so they all look clearly foreign. Ho hum.

Audio-wise we get a DD2.0 stereo soundtrack, which again offers no surprises.

Normally I might rail against this for a title that is music-related, but you're not missing anything here.

Extra Features

A trailer and a gallery. Why bother? These are the things we got on DVDs 10 years ago when they were rushed out to cash in on a new format.

Conclusion

Oh dear.

I enjoyed watching this film about as much as I would enjoy watching anything outlined in the introduction. Where was the "snappy satire about the music industry"? Where were the attacks on "choregraphed genre hybrids"? All I managed to find were grotesques, caricatures and vacuous parodies portrayed by people with a vague grasp of acting, with the exception of Tamsin Egerton who had a normal character to play and did her best.



Perhaps the blurb about "sex, drugs, alien abduction and crocodiles" should have been a warning to expect a script featuring incestous "grooming" aliens, but such things are generally hard to predict. I've watched some dross in my time, sometimes intentionally, but this was awful.

If you want to watch something poking fun at all those things I mentioned earlier, you could do much worse than Britain's Got The Pop Factor and Possibly a New Celebrity Jesus Christ Soapstar Superstar Strictly on Ice. Far more entertaining, and very funny.

Avoid this film (I believe that won't be too hard!)