Top bank holiday standby favourite easily belittled by the po-faced but the quality still shines through and it’s impossible not to love it (if you don’t love it, then please leave now). Director Alan Parker claims to try and tackle a project as different from his others as possible as a criteria for taking any picture on and they don’t come any more different than this but he makes it work beautifully, with the help of the excellent cast, of course – Foster, Baio, Langford… er, Curry and all. For all the blah of it being over-cute, the menacing freeze-frame when someone gets “creamed” in the face was (and to an extent still is) every bit as harrowing as any X-rated gibletfest.
Richard Davies
August 4, 2010 at 8:56 pm
It’s interesting that almost all the singing voices are very different to the characters, or that Jodie Foster has a vocal range almost as wide as Mariah Carey’s.
lump516
January 3, 2011 at 3:54 am
I liked this film EXCEPT for Jodie Foster — she was never a kid actor and that made her creepy as hell in this. Not Alan Parker’s fault because she came across as a 45-ish cigarette hag in every film she did before she reached her emancipated minor-hood . . .
richardpd
February 10, 2020 at 11:19 pm
I’ve been listening to the soundtrack recently for the first time in ages, & it got me thinking about the film.
While most of the songs fit the Jazz age setting well, some 1970s touches slip though, especially some wah-wah guitar.
Also what’s with the baseball scene in the opening titles? was something that didn’t make it into the final cut.
The kid who played Fat Sam became a building contractor, & got into trouble for taking (or giving) back handers for work.