Leslie Felperin 

God Help the Girl review – Belle and Sebastian fans will try to defend this disaster

This musical built around the songs that comprised his same-titled studio album of 2009 is a big smeary mess of twee, writes Leslie Felperin
  
  

God Help the Girl
Teetering tower of fey … God Help the Girl Photograph: PR

It pains a longstanding fan to admit it, but this is bad. Directed by Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch and built around the songs that comprised his same-titled studio album of 2009, this musical layers swinging-60s pastiche upon Gallic-style pop pastiche upon indie-kid angst to build a teetering tower of fey posturing that takes 112 excruciating minutes to topple into a smeary mess of twee. Emily Browning, the go-to girl these days for broken-doll fragility, plays a recovering anorexic named Eve who hooks up with bedsit troubadour James (Olly Alexander) and second-banana Cassie (Hannah Murray) to form a pop combo that sounds much like a B&S tribute band.

As an album, the material only just worked; as a film, it's disastrous, fatally flawed by a shoddy script and poor direction, like something made by the most ostensibly talented guy at art school. No doubt hardcore B&S fans will defend it, and others will perversely champion its audacious attempt to revive retro forms of film-making in a hip new way. But they would be wrong. It's not funny or clever, or even musically very interesting. It's just bad.

 

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