Hunky Dory - Better than High School Musical

If anyone who has seen Hunky Dory can think of a better word than delightful to describe this film, then please let me know. 'Hunky Dory' is a story set in the wilds of rural Wales in the hot summer of 1976. As anyone who lived through that year will confirm, 76 was the hottest British summer anyone could remember for a long time and it's long lazy days lounging around trying to stay cool are lovingly recreated here.
Minnie Driver plays Viv, the local girl who went away to university and came back as a teacher blessed with a desire to give children one last opportunity to express themselves artistically before being thrown into the alienation of working class work. To this end, Viv is putting on a modern musical production of William Shakespeare's The Tempest - using modern music. The film opens at a rehearsal 2 weeks before the play is due to be realised with a wonderful rendition of David Bowie's Life on Mars. If you're not sold by that then you might as well stop watching right away because there's plenty more where that came from.

There are people of a certain age who will be unable not to fall in love with this film for no reason other than the music. But there's a simplicity to the plot that has some appeal too. Nominally the plot is nothing more than a 2 week window into the lives of a small group of school kids who are living through an idyllic summer, a summer they'll spend the rest of their lives looking back upon with loving nostalgia. Leading lad Davey loves Stella, who in turn is infatuated by a mysterious young black lad who becomes the target of racial abuse by Kenny and his friends. Kenny is a confused lad though who isn't sure where his loyalties and future lie, he seems to have become a skin-head simply to fit in. Davey and Stella's friends form a tapestry of life that every teenager feels as their school days come to an end. That moment we all feel when the relief of knowing you never have to go back to school is tempered by the realisation that you're now less free than ever. All the while that this teenage drama plays out, Viv battles the age old enemies of artistic expression - the forces of conservatism within the school who see such expression as something to be stamped on. Where she sees an opportunity to give the kids one last harrah, there are others in the school who see only dissent and anarchy.

Wonderfully well-intentioned though this is, if it wasn't for the music I think the film would have got a bit tiresome. After all it isn't that much fun to watch teenagers mope artistically around in the stifling heat worrying about their sexuality. The film is made by the music, the musical performances by the young actors and actresses and Driver (who does a very good Welsh accent). If you don't at least enjoy the music then you've got a very hard heart, and once you're enjoying the music the rest of the film is more than passable.

Hunky Dory has to be a 'must see' if you were a teenager in the 70s and like David Bowie. For the rest of us - it's a bit of good fun.  At least it's better than High School Musical.