| QUIZMASTER TAKES ALL : Tom Vaughan's 'Starter For Ten' [5/10] |
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| Monday, 06 November 2006 | |
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As the classic Young Ones episode 'Bambi' so drolly illustrated, the British TV perennial University Challenge (based on the American College Bowl) - with its earnest, uber-geeky contestants and not-so-subtle subtext of class warfare - is a ripe target for knockabout satire. And let's not forget that Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994) showed how an intelligent cinematic treatment of not-dissimilar subject-matter can yield surprisingly engrossing rewards. How disappointing, then, that Starter For Ten - which chronicles a young man's progress from UC watcher to contestant, via his becoming a student at Bristol University - should be such a blandly by-the-numbers affair. It's all the more dispiriting because the writer-director Tom Vaughan is a relatively young first-time film-maker: as well as carrying more than a whiff of Sandra Goldbacher's Me Without You (2001), the picture feels more like the journeyman work of a sixty-something veteran (one who's spent most of his career in a television studio) rather than what it should be, namely the bold debut of a fresh new voice in British cinema. And you'd be forgiven for expecting the latter from the presence of no less than Tom Hanks and Sam Mendes in the credits, both of whom are listed as producers (suggesting that they somehow came into contact with Vaughan during the making of Road to Perdition.) What could have attracted such big names to such middling fare? Perhaps they were both keen to work with James MacAvoy, BAFTA-anointed rising star of British cinema after his eyecatching work in Inside I'm Dancing (aka Rory O'Shea Was Here), Bright Young Things and Chronicles of Narnia. Though his accent is a bit wobbly (quasi-Cockney one minute, Estuary the next) he's perfectly OK in the central role of Brian Jackson, a well-meaning, slightly gauche/naive student motivated by the belief that knowledge is the key to happiness. For Brian - who we first see as a bespectacled kid in the early seventies, watching UC with his parents in their suburban Southend semi - 'knowledge' means the accumulation of facts, mostly of a trivial, quiz-oriented nature. Arriving at Bristol in 1985 to study English Literature, he soon discovers there's more to life than 'swotting up.' In implausibly double-quick time, he befriends knockout blonde posh-babe Alice (Alice Eve) and the edgily radical-chic Rebecca (Rebecca Hall). Brian's ensuing romantic entanglements prove a considerable distraction for his UC preparation under the stern guidance of twitchily obsessive team-captain Patrick (Benedict Cumberbatch) - and though he does eventually make it to the TV studio and the avuncular presence of quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne (Mark Gatiss), fate has a surprise in store... In theory, it should be very hard to take against Starter For Ten: much like its tousle-haired, doe-eyed campus-Candide protagonist, the film is puppyishly eager to please and impress. Vaughan serves up a tried-and-tested combination of character-based humour and gentle nostalgia - the latter emphasised by a soundtrack filled with contemporary "indie" hits from the likes of The Cure. But Vaughan's attention to period detail is half-hearted at best (he even includes a Cure track, 'Picture of You,' which didn't come out until 1989) and he might have been better advised to depart from David Nicholls's 2003-published source novel and set the film in the present day. The most notable downside of such a switch would be the reduced screen-time for Gatiss's top-value Gascoigne impersonation, as University Challenge has been (irascibly) compered by Jeremy Paxman since it returned to our screens in the late 90s. Such an update would also require a rethink of the Rebecca character, as her brand of fiery, down-with-Thatcher, ban-the-bomb, free-Nelson-Mandela agit-prop is very much of its era. Hall would likely cope well with such a rewrite, however: she's an engagingly fresh screen presence who breathes life into the picture whenever she pops up, which isn't as often as it could and should have been. She's frustratingly underused, although it's all too obvious from her very first appeaance that she and Brian - for all Alice's Patsy Kensit-ish charms - will be together come the final fade. Indeed, Brian's story - chronicling his rise from humble working-class origins, via the traumatic death of his father, to the hallowed halls of academe (and the not-so-hallowed corridors of Manchester's Granada Studios) - is a touch too predictable at every stage. It's left to Hall, Cumberbatch and Gatiss - plus screen newcomer Reuben Henry Biggs (in a hilariously sneering cameo as opposing-team captain Salmon) - to keep things in any way surprising or lively, their vivid 'turns' enjoyably pitched at the level of camp caricature. Vaughan should perhaps have pushed Starter For Ten more solidly in that kind of direction: much like his wet-behind-the-ears hero, he's making progress... but has still got rather a lot to learn. Neil Young 13th June, 2006 (online publication embargoed until 6th November) STARTER FOR TEN : [5/10] : UK 2006 : Tom VAUGHAN : 97 mins (BBFC timing) : seen at Odeon cinema, Nuneaton (UK), 9th June 2006 - press show (CinemaDays event) |
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