It's an energetic and vivacious film that will appeal to fans of punk rock worldwide and should find its place in the pantheon of great music-film biographies.
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Musical biopics usually replicate a star's rise and fall in depressingly predictable fashion. Hurray, then, for Mat Whitecross and his vibrantly eclectic take on what should feel like the same old story.
60
Empire
Empire
A sometimes whimsical and magical take on the life of one of Britain’s most artistically charged rock stars. Serkis shines in his role as the troubled singer.
50
Variety
Variety
Paul Viragh's script is too bitty to hold it all together, and filigrees of technique fail to disguise the weaknesses in helmer Mat Whitecross' first solo flight.
Its flashes of style are sometimes lively but more often seem, like the slavish period décor, to be desperate attempts to overcome the built-in inertia of the genre.
A new biopic of eccentric British rock legend Ian Dury, Andy Serkis uncoils a performance of spit, grit and wit so ferocious it only serves to starkly clarify how unremarkable and formulaic the rest of the movie is.