Few movies have dealt with adolescence in such an honest fashion as Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best, a joyous tale of a trio of 13-year-old girls who decide to form a punk band in eighties Stockholm.
All too often, film-makers use children as a mouthpiece for their own adult world view, resulting in unrealistic depictions of childhood. Not so with Moodysson; the protagonists of his film aren’t here to learn any life lessons, and they’re certainly not out to teach us any. They just want to be teenagers, living life three chords at a time. Featuring stunning performances from its young leads, We Are the Best is an infectious feel-good movie that will have you fondly recalling your own adolescence.
2011’s The Amazing Spider-Man was given a lukewarm reception by fans and critics but its sequel has been garnering rave reviews, and deservedly so. Director Marc Webb’s film avoids the usual pitfalls of superhero movies, giving us well rounded characters that we actually grow to care about through the course of the movie. The darkness of most of today’s comic book adaptations is refreshingly absent, with a tone that instead recalls the great Superman movies of the eighties.
Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan are two of the best comic actors working today but their talents are sadly wasted in The Love Punch. With not a single moment worthy of exercising your funny bone, The Love Punch feels like a big screen adaptation of some awful unseen sitcom from 1983.
By Eric Hillis
