Film Review: Nowhere Boy (15) ****
THIS John Lennon biopic is like a TV movie blown up for the silver screen, but it still manages to be a sympathetic, highly watchable film with a raw, emotional edge.
It touches on the Beatles’ formation and their development into a young group who would be brave enough to try forging their sound in Hamburg.
Before all that, however, Lennon was something of a lost soul, brought up by his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and bought his first harmonica by Uncle George (David Thelfall).
By turns alone, witty and potentially violent, re-connecting with his real mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), opens up a ravine of emotion as well as introducing him to Elvis and the guitar.
Although the bus roof scene is well done, there isn’t too much to look at.
And, overall, it’s not quite as good as An Education, Nick Hornby’s recent adaptaton of Lynn Barber’s memoir about her teenage self growing up fast.
Now aged 19, High Wycombe-born Aaron seems to be equally far ahead of his own life given that he’s currently engaged to artist-turned-director Sam Taylor-Wood, 42.
He’s outstanding as the boy Lennon who finds himself torn between two women, never better illustrated than the scene in which Mimi wonders how to complete the passport form so essential to his Hamburg adventure.
Based on the memoir of Lennon’s half-sister Julia Baird and turned into a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh (who wrote the Ian Curtis biopic Control), Nowhere Boy illustrates why the adult Lennon had so much to write about.
He’d already had a life-and-a-half by the time he was 20.
X Factor wannabes take note.
