GOD HELP THE GIRL (Stuart Murdoch). 111 minutes. Opens Friday (October 10). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
I really like Belle and Sebastian, the Scots pop combo fronted by Stuart Murdoch. Yes, their music is as twee as a box full of snow globes being delivered to a Brooklyn walk-up by Zooey Deschanel on a fixie, but it’s also pure and charming and oddly cinematic.
This is why I find Murdoch’s God Help The Girl, a musical about a Scots pop combo that forms in Glasgow over one eventful summer, so perplexing. It is, basically, a mess: leadenly paced, indifferently staged, sloppy in its characterization and insufferable in its storytelling.
Pompeii’s Emily Browning and Penny Dreadful’s Olly Alexander are little more than mannequins in Murdoch’s indie-popster fantasia. There are numerous scenes of them trying on clothes, formulating their looks. They’re not characters, they’re sketches: Browning’s Eve is a recovering anorexic who sleeps with a dickish musician (Pierre Boulanger) while Alexander’s James mutters about artistic integrity and mopes in his room.
In a couple of sequences, Murdoch somehow gets everything right – the music and the visuals come together just so, or Browning’s faltering smile punches a hole through her character’s affectations.
If you’re a B&S fan, those moments will just barely justify your attendance. If you’re not, maybe listen to the album instead.
