Starter
For Ten
“Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to
be clever,” Brian Jackson confesses in voice over at the start
of Starter For Ten. A working-class student from Essex navigating
his first year at Bristol University, Brian (James McAvoy) has a lot
to prove. While his hometown mates worry about him turning into a poncey
wanker, Brian’s biggest concern is making the team for the long-running
British television quiz show University Challenge.
Amidst Tarts & Vicars dances, anti-Apartheid rallies, minging dorm
rooms and puffs of marijuana smoke, Brian also finds himself romantically
torn between two very different fellow students: ultra-fit blonde bombshell
and University Challenge teammate Alice (Alice Eve), and thoughtful,
politically-conscious Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall, soon-to-be seen
in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige).
With Margaret Thatcher’s economically depressed Blighty as a backdrop,
and a killer, pitch-perfect New Wave soundtrack—featuring music
by The Cure, Wham!, Bananarama, Yaz, The Smiths, New Order, Tears For
Fears, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Buzzcocks, and The Psychedelic Furs
— in the foreground, Starter For Ten is the great British
teen 80s movie that never was...
It is also altogether delightful, with UK comedy sensation Catherine
Tate co-starring as Brian’s steadfast mum, and McAvoy (The
Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe’s Mr. Tumnus the Faun)
delivering the kind of charming, humorous performance that reinvigorates
a genre. Though Brian Jackson knows everything, like all honest coming-of-age
stories, Starter For Ten is ultimately about its hero discovering
the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
Directed by Tom Vaughan, based on the novel by David Nicholls, Starter
For Ten is produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Pippa Harris
and executive produced by Sam Mendes, Steven Shareshian, Nathalie Marciano
and Michelle Chydzik Sowa.
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James McAvoy
Interview
Official
Site
starterfortenthemovie.co.uk
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