That Summer!

Unfairly treated in the rock press, because the excellent soundtrack album led everyone into believing they were getting a hard-nosed film about the summer of punk. In fact this is a polished, if rather traditional, summerfuntime feature about a group of kids hanging out in Torquay. The storyline is necessarily slim, and to win an 'AA' certificate the film had to go easy on sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, but within his limited format Cokliss has performed small wonders: the acting is good (notably Byatt as a stomping Glasgow heavy), the script is funny, and the photography has some of the shimmering surface energy of American Graffiti. The pity is that the superb music has largely been thrown away, and the ending degenerates into Boy's Own Paper twaddle.