Film review: '90s Take That-mania becomes the stuff of mid-life japes in Greatest Days
Greatest Days is a upcoming British film based on the Take That jukebox musical of the same name.
- Greatest Days
- ★★★★☆
Never forget where you’ve come here from, as the Take That chaps might say themselves, and never pretend that it’s all real. That line serves as the guiding philosophy of (12A), which opens with Rachel (Aisling Bea), now a paediatric ward sister, reminiscing about her halcyon teenage years in Clitheroe, Lancashire, when the 15-year-old Rachel (Lara McDonnell) and her friends Heather (Eliza Dobson), Zoe (Nandi Sawyers-Hudson) and Claire (Carragon Guest) were obsessed with Take That.
When the older Rachel wins a competition to bring a group of friends to see ‘the boys’ live at the Acropolis in Athens, it seems like a dream come true. The only problem is, Rachel hasn’t seen her girlfriends for 25 years…
Based on the stage musical The Band, and adapted by Tim Firth and directed by Coky Giedroyc, leans into the fantasy of Rachel’s life-long passion for the Manchester quintet — the tone is set by an early scene in which the young Rachel prepares dinner for her brother and implores the boys, who are prancing about the kitchen and popping out of cupboards, to sing louder to drown out her parents’ argument.
Veering from humorous whimsy to the battles Rachel wages with her personal demons, the story careers along in ramshackle style, now the tale of Rachel’s mid-life crisis (there’s only so many times she can politely refuse her boyfriend Jeff’s (Marc Wootton) marriage proposals), now a coming-of-age yarn in which the teenage girls focus on Take That as a safe outlet for their emotional turmoil.
It doesn’t hit the heights of similar movies like or — in part because Take That’s back catalogue lacks the depth and breadth of Abba’s — but Aisling Bea is terrific as the laconic, downbeat Rachel, and she gets strong support from Lara McDonnell and Marc Wootton.
A whimsical fable about enduring friendship that features plenty of toe-tapping numbers, is a bright ‘n’ breezy feelgood flick.
(cinema release)
