Stiff Upper Lip, Old Man -- It's Only the Olympics

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2007)

Very British, very proper and very dull movie about two English athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics. It's one of those inspirational stories that undoubtedly had audiences on their feet cheering at its end, but now the only thing memorable about it is its theme song.
"Chariots of Fire" came out at a time when Hollywood was beginning to fall in love with British films, and for a while there in the 1980s and early 1990s, everyone equated tasteful film-making with good film-making. If movies perfectly recreated an historical period and did it with reserve, they won awards, no matter how embalmed the final product might have been.
I'll be generous because it does have good music.
Grade: B-