Word: mod
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...like Busby Berkeley on a bummer. By that time, The Who was working on extensions both of Tommy's form and its themes. Quadrophenia (1973) was an even more ambitious, although less flashy, successor, a two-record chronicle of the desperate life and ironic resurrection of a poor London Mod kid in the early '60s. (It has just been released in a street-shrewd, roughhouse movie adaptation. The sound track, remixed by Entwistle, sounds even better than the recorded original...
...publicist named Peter Meaden assumed informal responsibility for managing them, molding them into front men for the flourishing Mod movement. Representing a sort of secret style, a surly, dubious attitude and a way of life in which the work week was a lingering funeral and the weekend a temporary resurrection, Mod was a kind of berserk street refraction of traditional English clubmanship. Having the right clothes and shoes was important. Riding the right motor scooter was important. Gobbling the right pills in the right quantities and listening to the right music were important. All this has been captured well...
Ivory might have been helpful, but he is a careful and slightly anemic director, unable to dig out tensions lurking beneath his correct, bland surfaces. The result is a pleasant, pretty entertainment. One suspects that this film is outside its natural element on a theatrical screen, that its mod est virtues would shine to better advantage on PBS. If we had a properly functioning public broadcasting system in the country, American classics like The Europeans might be produced with funds and talent in profusion...
...tedious medical cri ses are easily averted, and the comedy leaden. As always in this genre, there is a young sidekick for the middle-aged hero. This time out, the second banana calls himself Gonzo, purports to be a Viet Nam veteran, looks and acts like a fashion mod el and lives in a very cute van called the Titanic...
This is not to say that Voices is a particularly good film. The story line is so jammed with stereotypes and so improbable that you have to grin throughout just so no one will think you're taking it seriously. A lot of the acting is reminiscent of the Mod Squad (cool and vacant) school. Voices is simply not good enough to make it worth sitting through another movie about upward social mobility, human kindness and disco...