Film

Out of Order (1987)

Director: Jonnie Turpie

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Jaz (Fryer) and Anthony (Webster) are a couple of layabout lovebirds roosting in the telegenic town of Telford. Glynis and Kerry (The Wee Papa Girl Rappers) run pirate station Radio Giro. When Anthony decides to climb out of the rut and become a rookie rozzer, teenage trauma looms. Meanwhile Billy (Lee-Wilson), a BT phone fetishist, gets fired but discovers that he has the ability to tap into the network without using the receiver, i.e. he is tele-pathic. One way or another they all end up in the cells, and Anthony has to decide which side he's on. This offering from the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop gleefully rips off the good bits of TV, video and cinema techniques, and stirs them up into a tangy salmagundi of styles. The soundtrack, a basic mix of rap, disco and funk, manages to splice The Smiths, Robert Palmer and Smiley Culture with Frank Sinatra. The result doesn't say anything new about the joys of living in Thatcher's Britain, but the means by which the message is put across is both witty and wacky.

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