Summary:
It’s just another day at school for West London teenagers Trife (AML AMEEN) Jay (ADAM DEACON) and Moony (FEMI OYENIRAN): beatings in the classroom, sex on the playing field and drugs in the schoolyard. But things are about to flip sharply for this tight trio and their crowd. With school cancelled following the tragic suicide of bullied pupil Katie, the teenagers are all forced to face their own responsibilities and blame for the situations they have got themselves into.
15-year-old Trife is facing a crossroads in his life. His uncle is tempting him with fast money, easy women and the gangster lifestyle; while his girlfriend Alisa (RED MADRELL) offers an escape to what she promises will be a better life. Trife must make a choice. But with word spreading that Alisa has slept with someone else, will he make the right one? Along with Jay and Moony, he also has the school bully Sam (NOEL CLARKE) to contend with. Sam is out for revenge after Jay steals his girlfriend Claire (MADELINE FAIRLEY) who he has been physically abusing and the trio (Trife, Jay and Moony) humiliate and beat him in his own house.
Trife’s girlfriend Alisa is also having a bad day. She’s just learnt that she’s pregnant. But her best friend Becky (JAIME WINSTONE) is only interested in dragging her out on a drug and shopping binge. With the brother of dead Katie set on revenge and everyone heading to the same party, the scene is set for a decisive collision.
It’s step up or back down time…
A harrowing, shocking story that finds humour in its narrative and set to a blistering UK Hip Hop and Grime soundtrack, KIDULTHOOD is a new kind of British film.
Based on real kids. Real stories. This is real life.
Review:
Real life my arse.
Kidulthood is nothing but 89 minutes of chavvy slang and pointless fighting. It actually serves well to represent the idiocy of this generation of teenagers. With the advent of grime in the UK, kids have been turned into smoking, fighting chavvy idiots who randomly go around terrorising their local area for no reason but to prove themselves hard.
The film revolves loosely around main character Trife, who is your average black UK guy. Dabbles in drugs, smokes weed and pisses around, but when it actually comes to it doesn't actually go that far with actual fighting. His friends featured in the film are Jay, the typical w_gger kid, and Moony, the semi-intelligent-and-therefore-seen-as-pussy one. Also featured are Sam, who i like to think of as King Chav, and Trife's ex-girlfriend and her bitch friend.
The film's plot (and i use that term very loosely) is basically "a day in the life of a UK teenager"; that's the gimmick. Therefore, the first half of the film is stupid bullshit, and the second half attempts to turn serious. It's like, there is no way they will have such fierce changes of heart in one day, if ever, as for most of these people this is the life they chose, not what they were forced into. The film is also incredibly contradictory; it tries to suggest people are racist when Moony can't get a taxi, yet within 5 minutes Trife is shouting at a security guard who thinks he has stolen something, culminating in him throwing the hat at the guy and Jay calling him a "fuckin' pussy'ole". It also seems to try and preach that the gangsta lifestyle is not the right one, but then we see Trife, Jay and Moony break into Sam's house, steal his gameboy, Jay steal his girlfriend, hit Sam over the head with a keyboard and push his mum over? A lot of the film is incredibly trivial, so when it tries to switch into serious things like miscarriage, abortion, sex-for-drugs and murder, it doesn't work. You can't take these characters seriously, because, while they are a lot like modern UK teenagers, that's a bad thing. It makes you actually realise just how stupid they are; but what it fails to do is give an insight into why they are the way they are. I was thinking i might see why they feel the need to fight you in the street for no reason, but instead all i saw was a bunch of shit with no guilt or repercussions short of evil triumphing over good at the end, an end that serves to be incredibly climactic.
The shots of the film are not too varied, a lot of it is straightforward shots of the characters hanging around somewhere; there is the odd interesting angle, such as their escape from Sam's house showing them running down the stairs from an outside perspective, but these are few and far between. The film is set to a soundtrack of grime music which further accentuates the theme of this film and relates closely to the way the characters act; though this isn't exactly a good thing.
Bottom line, i hate this film. It's sequel Adulthood is much better.
