England is Mine – review

England is Mine is a documentary about a young, upcoming British band called the Smithies who are, apparently, crazy popular in their native London.

The movie centres on a guy called Morris E a guy with big ass chin and some flowers. I’ve never really got the UK music scene. I mean, INXS? What the hell was that all about, they were just ripping off U2. But I guess that a classic American rock band like U2 is always going to inspire some UK imitations, like when the Beatles ripped off the Rolling Stones.

But to get back to the movie, I had a few problems with it.

1, I couldn’t make out the dialogue, I guess that they were all talking on a cockney accent and that’s sometimes a little tricky to deal with. In the past, with movies like Trainspotting, they had some close captioning so that you understand what the cockneys were saying and it worked out pretty great. They should do that here.

2, This group, the Smithies, they’re not too great. So that means the movie isn’t too great. My advice to the guys would be to get a couple of Bruce Springsteen albums, and work up some music that really speaks to the average kid. You know, how you’ve just been laid off from the steelworks and you can’t take your best girl to the drive-in.

3, It rains a whole bunch. They should have set the movie in LA.

On the whole, not my thing. Maybe try again with a group people have heard of? Maroon 5, maybe?

**Screen-Idle star rating**

**