egregious

Rating: Null/10 (16 January 2004)

It looks sweet enough on first viewing, but every time you watch it afterwards, this film reveals more of its shallowness and crudity. Its use of the miners' strike as background to a sentimental, exploitative fairytale is nothing short of immoral. Moreover, it rips off the basic structure of Kes - a genuinely powerful and infinitely more honest account of working class life. If you don't know anything about the miners' strike, buy the BBC series 'Our Friends in the North' on DVD, don't watch Billy Elliot. I hate it, and so should all right-thinking people. Oh, and what's with the Mark Bolan soundtrack - annoyingly anachronistic, surely? - or is the film suggesting that everyone in the North East of England is always at least eight years out of step?