Teenage musicians travel to England's Spike Island in the hope of attending an outdoor performance by their favorite band, the Stone Roses. and at the same time, hatch a plan to hand-deliver their demo tape to their idols.
[The Stone Roses'] debut long player is one of the few rock albums that might justly be assessed all killer, no filler; Whitecross and Coghill's sincerely intended love letter to the era, not so much.
The film has an engagingly zippy and colorful visual style, evoking the splashy Summer of Love motifs around the Roses, with allusions to their music videos and paint-splattered, Jackson Pollock-esque sleeve artwork.
Taking its cue from the sort of pandering nostalgia that usually gets peddled to Baby Boomers, Mat Whitecross' irritating Spike Island follows a teenage gang of the Stone Roses' superfans in 1990 Manchester.
Though the story is drawn in broad strokes and overloaded with melodrama, director Mat Whitecross' exuberant feature understands the communal joy and personal necessity of rock 'n' roll.
