Blinded by the Light (2019)

[steve jaros]

Title: Blinded by the Light

Tagline: For anyone who has ever wanted to dream. You're not alone.

Genre: Drama, Comedy, Music

Director: Gurinder Chadha

Cast: Viveik Kalra, Nell Williams, Hayley Atwell, Kulvinder Ghir, Aaron Phagura, Dean-Charles Chapman, Meera Ganatra, Nikita Mehta, Tara Divina, Rob Brydon, Frankie Fox, Sally Phillips, Sofia Abbasi, Asheq Akhtar, Vincent Andriano, David Hayman, Lorraine Ashbourne, Marcus Brigstocke, Olivia Poulet, Jeff Mirza

Release: 2019-08-09

Runtime: 114

Plot: In 1987, during the austere days of Thatcher’s Britain, a teenager learns to live life, understand his family, and find his own voice through the music of Bruce Springsteen.

 

[steve jaros]

Saw this film today. My wife and I are casual Springsteen fans - we know the hits that everyone knows, but that's about it. That said, we loved this movie. Very uplifting, well acted, emotionally resonant. Compares favorably with the movies that have used Queen, Elton John, and the Beatles thematically recently.

B+

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I can’t wait to see this. Hopefully over the weekend. I’m a giant Springsteen fan and my wife...isn’t. I’m hoping that this film will at least help her understand why the music means so much to me, even if she’ll never feel the same way.

 

[Sam Favate]

Can't wait to see this. I'm one of those obsessive Springsteen fans; dozens of shows, hundreds of bootlegs, etc. I may not make it this weekend, but soon after that, I hope.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Releasing this wide at the very end of summer in such a crowded marketplace seems bizarre to me. It feels like it is one of those movies that would benefit from a careful platform launch to build buzz like what A24 has been doing with The Farewell lately. There's so much product crowding theaters right now, this one might struggle to get noticed. Box Office Mojo is projecting it will be in a "dogfight for tenth place" with Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, and if it opens that low, its shelf life in theaters probably won't be very long either.

I'd love to be wrong, but when I saw the trailer, I thought, "That looks like a specialty film." And it's getting a wide release right out of the gate.

It's not the same studio, but this is the same mistake Annapurna made earlier this summer with Booksmart, launching it very wide against Aladdin on Memorial Day when it should have been platformed to art houses first before expanding.

 

[steve jaros]

Releasing this wide at the very end of summer in such a crowded marketplace seems bizarre to me.

I agree. This movie is the equal in entertainment value to "Rocketman" and "Yesterday", the Elton John and Beatles - themed movies released earlier this summer, but because of timing, "Blinded by the Light" seems to have zero chance of making the good, profitable box office that those films pulled in.

 

[Keith Cobby]

Why would they name a film referencing Sprinsteen using a Manfred Mann song. Why not use a Springsteen song?

 

[Tino]

Why would they name a film referencing Sprinsteen using a Manfred Mann song. Why not use a Springsteen song?

They did. Springsteen wrote it.

"Blinded by the Light" is a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on his 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

 

[Robert Crawford]

They did. Springsteen wrote it.

"Blinded by the Light" is a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on his 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

Yeah, a lot people didn't know that little fact.

 

[Tino]

Yeah, a lot people didn't know that little fact.

Apparently.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Apparently.

Similar to Because the Night, but with some differences.

 

[Keith Cobby]

They did. Springsteen wrote it.

"Blinded by the Light" is a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen, which first appeared on his 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

Something I didn't know, thanks. I previously googled the song and it didn't pop up. I subsequently listened to Springsteen's version and it was quite unrecognisable, in fact it is horrible!

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Something I didn't know, thanks. I previously googled the song and it didn't pop up. I subsequently listened to Springsteen's version and it was quite unrecognisable, in fact it is horrible!

 

[Jeffrey D]

Something I didn't know, thanks. I previously googled the song and it didn't pop up. I subsequently listened to Springsteen's version and it was quite unrecognisable, in fact it is horrible!

It’s not horrible, in my opinion- it’s just completely different.

A little off topic, but it doesn’t get any better than Kitty’s Back from Wild & Innocent. Great smoking rock/jazz tune.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

A little off topic, but it doesn’t get any better than Kitty’s Back from Wild & Innocent. Great smoking rock/jazz tune.

"KB" is indeed a great song! Hard for me to say it's the best song on the album since that same album includes "Incident", but it's still great!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I saw and enjoyed this yesterday.

In some ways, it wasn't entirely what I expected - or rather, I knew the movie was a coming of age story where the music of Bruce Springsteen helped the protagonist come into his own as an adult. I wasn't necessarily expecting the sheer brutality of the situation that the protagonist, Javed, had to deal with growing up. I felt so bad for this kid, who is being raised in England by a Pakistani-immigrant father who doesn't want his children to acknowledge or accept the country that they're being raised in. I might have felt worse watching his father berate him than I did watching the local racists spit on him for simply not being white, and that was pretty brutal too.

I did like the movie, but the (true to life) ugliness depicted in the film made a two hour film feel closer to three for me. I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure I'd need to see it a second time.

 

[steve jaros]

FWIW, some Springsteen-written songs that others took up the Billboard Hot 100:

"Blinded by the Light" - Manfred Mann ..... #1

"Fire" - Pointer Sisters ................................. #2

"Because the Night" - Patti Smith .............. #10

"This Little Girl" - Gary US Bonds .............. #11

There are probably others? One thing that stands out to me is that all of these songs were written no later than 1980. That suggests that after this, Springsteen and/or his management made sure that if a song had hit potential, that Bruce himself capitalized on it as a performer.

FWIW, Springsteen also had a hit with another writer's song - his live version of Motown songwriters "War" went to #8 in 1986.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

FWIW, some Springsteen-written songs that others took up the Billboard Hot 100:

"Blinded by the Light" - Manfred Mann ..... #1

"Fire" - Pointer Sisters ................................. #2

"Because the Night" - Patti Smith .............. #10

"This Little Girl" - Gary US Bonds .............. #11

There are probably others? One thing that stands out to me is that all of these songs were written no later than 1980. That suggests that after this, Springsteen and/or his management made sure that if a song had hit potential, that Bruce himself capitalized on it as a performer.

FWIW, Springsteen also had a hit with another writer's song - his live version of Motown songwriters "War" went to #8 in 1986.

Natalie Cole's "Pink Cadillac" got to #5 in the US. Manfred Mann also released "Spirit in the Night" as a single but it only got to #40.

In terms of the fact Bruce "gave away" fewer songs after 1980, I think that's less because of a desire to keep the hits for himself - "Pink Cadillac" was relegated to a B side! - and more that he wasn't as prolific a writer after the early 80s.

Really, the well ran dry to a large extent after "BITUSA". Not that Bruce still didn't produce new songs, but he was a machine in the 70s who had so much good material he could afford to give it away!

He had to hold on tighter after that because he simply didn't have as much!

 

[DaveF]

"Blinded by the Light" is a wonderful coming-of-age high-school movie set in 1980's England. It's both nostalgic and a completely new perspective on '80s teen films for me. It also did a remarkable job of illuminating Bruce Springsteen. A complete delight!

 

[Sam Favate]

I enjoyed the movie and thought it was good, but not great. The parts where the characters are hearing the songs for the first time and talking about what they mean to them are great. The family drama is compelling too. But the quasi-musical numbers just don’t work. As a lifelong Springsteen fan (my next show will be my 80th), I found a few of those singalongs to be cringe-worthy. Still, it was a very good cast and it told a familiar story very well.