Kidulthood (2006) Reviews

• portrayed real life

  sexy_bexi_baby2006-10-04

  As a black girl living in London, I saw how this film portrayed real life. In the scenes at the beginning, in the school, I could relate fully to the events. People may not think that it truly represents black people, or schools in London, I beg to differ. You obviously have not been in a bad enough school. The language used in the film, the slang, is a part of life now. I look at schools on the telly and wish that I do not have to call everyone 'blud'. If I do not, I will get beaten up for 'trying to be white'. Kidulthood was a fantastic film, showing, yes, a different way of life, but a true representation of it. It was actually quite unnerving at how similar life is for my community to that of the film.

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• why all the bad ratings

  wildsheep2006-03-08

  I am not sure why this film is getting so many poor ratings. It is an excellent piece of film-making with a cracking script, fine performances and imaginative direction. A real eye opener that deserves a wide audience. The movie has sparked some controversy in the UK for 'glorifying' the violence, sex and drugs portrayed but that is rubbish, this is essentially a deeply moral tale at heart. Mark Kermode gave it a very sensible and measured review on his Radio 5 slot and I am in agreement with him. I predict that a number of the actors in Kidulthood will go on to bigger things. A group of talent to watch.

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• At last a great little Film , and it's British too

  BlackNarcissus2006-03-05

  If like me you have despaired at the way that the London has been portrayed in films over the last 10 or so years this film is a God send. This is a London that truly reflects the city as it is today and not as it was in the 50s, like films such as Notting Hill, Wimbledon and Love Actually to name but a few. Added to that the film isn't to bad considering the recent track record of UK films. Its a bit like Larry Clarke's Kids meets Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing with added Grange Hill (a BBC Children's drama programme)all set in & around Ladbroke Grove & Harrow Road, London. The film tells the stories of a number of kids given the day off school after a girl kills herself after being bullied. What ensues over the next 24 hours includes a relentless tide of booze, drug taking, underage sex, stealing as well as Gun-crime. And not once is there any preaching or moralising that is left to the viewer to make there own mind up on. The performances in the main are some what workman like however two performances stand out, that of Aml Ameen (Trife) and Jamie Winstone (Becky). Of the two, Winstone is some to look out for because on the evidence of this film she has a bright future. Director Menhaj Huda handles things well from Noel Clarke's first time script, again both are to be looked out for in the future. The film also has a firin' Soundtrack by some of the UK's Hip Hop & Grime artists, giving the film the feel of a US production. As I said in the beginning this film is an antidote to all those fay Richard Curtis film's we've had to endure over the last few years. One hopes that the filmmakers get the opportunity to make more like it, if not in the UK in the US. The film is definitely one to check out if you can.

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• America's 'KIDS' and girls of 'THIRTEEN', meet the UK world of 'KIDULTHOOD'....

  marxthedude2006-03-09

  Over the waters, it seems anyone not from England is in love with that wonderful Richard Curtis-like view of the globe, which is neither bad or drastically inaccurate, but covers a very small percentage of what life in the UK and particularly ordinary UK people are actually like. Refreshingly comes "Kidulthood", an all too accurate if at times sensational version of average school-kids in London. We meet an assortment of characters, most of them only likable on a limited level, who's only motivation is to get through each day and fill the voids with partying, be it with drugs or sex, or petty crime. The film takes us through two days of their lives and how each character, be it the misguided Trife (Aml Ameen) or the sexually motivated Becky (Jamie Winstone) as well as others, on the day when a big party looms and the suicide of a classmate seems lurking in the background. Growing up on a London housing estate and seeing the changes throughout the years has made me over-critical of films depicting this. The dialogue always being too polished or too neat, the accents as caricatured as Dick Van Dyke's cockney chimney sweep (the recent "Green Street" and anything Guy Ritchie suffered from this in spades) but refreshingly all this is absent here. The performances are very real, so real, that it would be easy to confuse them as weak, particularly with characters such as Claire, played pitch perfectly by Madeleine Fairley with her words always having that hollow ring of someone saying what everyone around her wants to hear, rather than what they're really thinking. The language is fluid and the style completely believable; this is an excellent window into an average group of modern teens, as depressing as that is to admit. Marrying it to the excellent visual style and the lack of obvious moralising is both a strength and a weakness. Visually fast paced, using sliding split-screen and cinema scope, married to the creme of British gangster rap, this looks great, hiding it's indie roots and looking more like Steven Soderberg's 'Ocean's Eleven' than Larry Clark's 'Kids'. The pros of this are the audience it needs to reach will interpret this as 'cool' and maybe will end up seeing the characters as teen movie icons, more than stopping and thinking what the overall message is. It's disturbing, mostly in small gestures rather than the grand shocking ones. A pretty teenage girl is bullied, punched with a bone shattering crunch as her attacker screams at her to pick up the ring that flew off her finger, Claire is intimidated by her boyfriend by him warning that he'll tell everyone she is a lousy lay (and that's the clean version) with personal hygiene issues, as she pathetically begs him to stop; it's certainly not a film for those seeking a rose-coloured view of society. "Kidulthood" is a much needed reply to the belief that England is a pretty cool place and it's teens as going through a harmless phase. It is entertaining but without selling itself out, despite an ending thats a little too explosive to believe. Not since Garly Oldman's 'Nil By Mouth' has a film seemed so richly realistic and it's to the director and the writer's credit that they have achieved this. Whilst sad, it's not as 'slash your wrists' depressing as you might assume either; the power of the film is one that lingers after and hopefully it is that, that might reach to people not only affected by what they've seen but most of all identifying with it.

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• Good film - absurdly low rating

  jeremy-liebster2006-06-08

  Like one of the other reviewers on this site I am going to vote 10 out of 10 for Kidulthood to try to redress the anomaly of its incredibly low score. Something is surely wrong with the IMDb system when most of the reviews on the site are positive yet the film has such a low rating. Anyway I thought Kidulthood was a very realistic 'urban streetkids' film which captured perfectly the style, speech and violence that happens every day around London's inner city schools. I thought the acting was absolutely fine especially considering the age of most of the actors - have those criticising the actors actually seen the way that teenage kids behave because I think they were all very believable. The film was tense, violent and gripping and is a nice London take on the issues of teenage gang violence.

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