Take It Or Leave It

Dave Robinson, 1981

Bob Marley made the most universal music ever. All around the world, all kinds of people love his stuff. Not as in don't mind it, but as in really deeply love it.

Madness have a tinge of that position in Britain. They have the music-hall element necessary for any British band to be taken to our hearts (Sergeant Peppers was profoundly experimental an all, but When I'm 64, Being For The Benefit of Mr Kite, Lovely Rita, they could all have been done on The Good Old Days). They also played a version of 2-Tone ska, the first multicultural music to originate in the UK. They have the British cuddly irreverence and cheek like we see in the Ealing comedies, but they can also make clear moral statements on songs like Embarrassment and Ghost Train. Their videos are still a joy to watch, fresh, funny, loose, boisterous, sparkling.

So, a film of them in their early days, played by the band themselves a few years later, it should be great, right?

Wrong. I've found a movie with an even greater great-band/shit-movie discrepancy than Control.

God, this film is boring. Shoddily shot, awkward, and with a pervading laddish meanness in lieu of any subtler way of having interaction, it's an endurance test. And I say that as someone who really loves the band and their music.

There's a fair bit of Sweeney London as the backdrop. Which of course has a dearth of bovines.

No cows.