Greatest Days: Film Review
Fans of Take That, rejoice! Greatest Days, the movie adaptation of their jukebox musical, The Band, has arrived.
The film, directed by Coky Giedroyc, stars Aisling Bea as Rachel, a nurse who wins a radio competition to see her favourite band reunite in Athens. She knows who she wants to take with her – her childhood best friends who were equally obsessed with the band – but they haven’t spoken in 25 years.
The narrative moves back and forth between Clitheroe in 1993 and various locations (but mostly London and Athens) in 2018. In the flashbacks, we follow teenage Rachel (Lara McDonnell) and her best friends Heather (Eliza Dobson), Zoe (Nandi Sawyers-Hudson), Claire (Carragon Guest) and Debbie (Jessie Mae Alonso) as they get ready to see the band in Manchester. In 2018, we follow adult Rachel as she has an existential crisis while trying to pluck up the courage to contact her estranged friends (played by Alice Lowe, Amaka Okafor and Jayde Adams as adults) – before she inevitably does and they end up in Athens.
I expected this to be a really flimsy film about a bunch of adults simply indulging in their childhood crushes and going on holiday to see The Band. I thought it was going to be a lighthearted fluff piece to string Take That songs together. But there’s much more substance to it and The Band itself is something of a MacGuffin. The friends are obsessed with the five boyband stars (who are never named), talk about them constantly and imagine them in their lives. But they’re ultimately quite insignificant and just the backdrop to a story about friendship, reconnecting with loved ones after a long time, and dealing with loss.
I must admit there were times when I cringed so hard at this movie because it felt cheap and cheerful, especially during some of the musical numbers. This obviously doesn’t have the same budget as a Hollywood movie musical but the singing was often weak and the choreography could have been more polished at times. Take That’s songs are generally performed well in the hands of The Band in the imagination sequences but the ones sung by the cast were more exposing. Alonso is a fantastic dancer and the ensemble has moments of solid singing here and there but overall, I wasn’t wowed by the musical side (except for the EasyJet and end sequences).
Yet, despite my issues with the musical numbers and the cheese factor, this uplifting movie won me over with its big heart. The story is sadder than you might expect and I ended up crying towards the end, but that’s probably a mix of the narrative and moving songs like Patience, Rule the World and Never Forget. The ending goes overboard with the sentimentality but it should still melt the most cynical of hearts.
In cinemas from Friday 16th June