Adulthood Review

So there I was, a Friday afternoon with a couple of hours to kill - this is where having a cinema across the road from your office comes in handy…

In I went ticket clutched in one hand - penny sweets in the other, (as a side issue - when did confectionery become as expensive as petrol?!) into the dark depths of the cinema. I like Friday afternoons, the cinema is nice and quiet, nobody kicks the back of my chair, and the big tough man 2 rows behind hasn’t decided that this is the best time to call his mate and tell him very loudly what he’s got planned for the rest of the week.

But shock horror! As I enter the screen I am not greeted with a row after row of gloriously empty seats each one awaiting my backside, instead I witness possibly the first ever sold out screen I have ever been a part of – and there is one seat left, 3rd row from the front next to a very stern looking teenage girl. Eek.
After being greeted with some rather nice subtle sniggering and name calling from my fellow cinemagoers, and a quick glance around the cinema it became rapidly apparent that I was the senior member of the audience. What was going on? Didn’t these young people realise that this was a film for ‘me’ to learn about what its like to be ‘them’? Something was going wrong – this wasn’t how it was meant to be.

And then finally (after a good 20 odd minutes of car and mobile phone commercials) the film started. Phew. So the question now is – was it any good?

Well… Unfortunately it’s a yes and a no. Whereas ‘Kidulthood’ was, as I previously mentioned, was an opportunity for us oldies to watch and go ‘I cant believe young people are like this these days, drugs, sex, bullying and mugging – this is shocking – my eyes have been opened to reality!’ ‘Adulthood’ appears to be going for a different tone altogether.

Following on 6 years from the first film, ‘Adulthood’ picks up with the character of Sam – all round meanie and bad guy from ‘Kidulthood,’ who had just been released from prison. Sam wants to move on and forget about the past, but unfortunately for him the people he has hurt and not so willing to let him off the hook…
Right – back to the cinema screening I was in – and this is where I think it becomes important. ‘Adulthood’ contains a lot of scenes that many would consider harsh or shocking – knife fights, muggings, drug abuse, sex, threats etc. Whereas ‘Kidulthood’ contained all of these, it sort of did it in a way that was saying ‘this is what life is like for a lot of teenagers.’ Adulthood on the other hand does the same and says ‘this is what life is like for a lot of teenagers when they are in that awkward in between bit of being young and being adult.’ But the crowd I was with, wasn’t there to see a story of redemption, nor where they present to witness a slice of ‘real life.’ No it was very clear from the get go that this audience wanted to reveal in the glorification of knife fights, muggings, drug abuse, sex, threats etc.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not having a moral dilemma, I didn’t think the film was out of order in this department, I’m more worrying that the target audience of ‘Adulthood’ has shifted towards 14-16 year olds who perhaps are not seeing the film for ‘how it was meant to be seen,’ (if that doesn’t sound too pompous.) Indeed the major speech of the film from one of the characters, which talked about how she wished could be young again, was near inaudible due to the chatter of the audience. It appeared that the crowd wanted some more up-tempo action.

Maybe it was because ‘Kidulthood’ captured something of what its like to be a young person today that ‘Adulthood’ suffers. Is it a story of redemption? Is it simply a day in the life of one person? Does it offer hope for a future? I’m not sure if the film answers any of these questions quite well enough. We never really find out what motivated some of the characters from the previous film to change, and the film doesn’t really seem to care.

If you want to experience something gritty about being a young person then this is always worth a viewing, I just couldn’t quite shrug the disappointment that this is an opportunity missed to speak to young people through a media they understand. I’d go and rent ‘Kidulthood’ and watch that instead.

Overall Rating (out of 5 stars) ✮✮✮

For more info on the story here is a description from Noel Clarke – writer, director and main character:

‘“The point of this film is that Sam finds redemption, not because he is looking for it, he doesn’t come out of jail saying, ‘Oh I’m sorry for what I did, let me find people and apologize. He has to learn that things have affected other people and he can’t just come out of jail and say ‘I just want a peaceful time, I’ve serve my time and that’s it. That’s not it, you’ve got a young girl without a dad, friends without a friend, a girl without a boyfriend, mothers without sons and he needs to learn how his actions affected other people. Not only does he need to learn, but to deal with it and face the facts. When they come after him and want to keep the cycle of violence going, being the worst person in the first film, he has to be the person to say, ‘I appreciate that you’re after me and we could keep this going for years, but I’m actually just going to go, I don’t want anything to do with this and I’m going to walk away’. I think a lot of the problem with people these days is that no one is willing to walk away. It’s not necessarily being a coward, it’s the fact that if I hurt you, you might go get your friends and hurt me, and if you hurt me I’ll go and get my friends and hurt you and at some point, someone has to say, you know what, forget this. Otherwise at some point, one of us is going to end up dead.

“The key is that it all comes down to choices. The film is about choices. Henry makes a choice early on when Dabs says we’ve got to go get this guy Henry says, ‘Are you crazy? I don’t want to get this guy’, and he suffers for it. Moony makes a choice when Jay says ‘forget your studies; let’s go get Sam. Moony makes that choice. Lexi makes her choices. For me, this whole film is about choices, it’s about how every single choice you make, especially in that sort of world, is going to affect what happens to you and to other people”.