Hilariously bad sequel (Adulthood (DVD))

Member Name: shaneo632

Product:	Adulthood (DVD)
Date:	20/07/09 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Terrible everything

Disadvantages: It's funny

The original Kidulthood was a serviceable, albeit lazily scripted film about how supposedly poor the conditions are of inner-city kids in London. It totally romanticises this and tries to almost give it a British spin on something like HBO's superb show The Wire. It was well acted enough to work, and the ending was visceral. The sequel, however, is another beast altogether.

I respect Noel Clarke for breaking into directing at such a young age, but this is a laughable, hilariously bad sequel that offers little real drama. Instead, it offers bathetic and overly dramatic interludes that Clarke has clearly pinched from watching too many films by Spike Lee. They don't work in an altered context at all, and what's more, the attempt to make us feel sympathy for a murderer who has the charm of a plank of wood doesn't help things. It's an expertly manipulative attempt, and frankly, I won't have it.

Also, one notable scene is the most criminal altogether - one character assaults a white middle-class couple, asking to see the woman's breasts, to which her frenzied boyfriend/husband utters "SHOW HIM THE TITTY!". I wish I was joking. Instead, I just burst out laughing at how self-serious this utter tripe was. It's so disingenuous and manipulative that I must confess to being entertained mildly by this train wreck, which punches the chuckle button when it wants to move you, and by all turns, is a relentlessly melodramatic film that makes The Notebook look restrained. Oh, and the editing is terrible.

Noel Clarke's follow up to 2006's Kidulthood is a poorly acted, bathetic and often unintentionally hilarious affair that employs frustrating editing techniques. Moreover, the representations of the white middle-class are rather insulting, as is the expectation that we root for a rather dislikeable killer.

Summary: A complete misfire - but hilarious