Cinemas - Also Released - 13/8/09

Aug 12 2009 Ellesmere Port Pioneer

BANDSLAM (PG)

EVERY year thousands of hopefuls risk public ridicule to chase fame and fortune by singing their hearts out on The X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent.

The big screen has a long tradition of these wish-fulfilment fairy tales about young men and women chasing their one moment in the spotlight, fuelled most recently by High School Musical and its spin-offs.

With Zac Efron hanging up his dancing shoes, Bandslam hopes to woo the same pre-teen crowd, charting the fortunes of a group of high school misfits who strum, sing and drum for glory in their local battle of the bands.

Efron’s on-screen and real-life sweetheart, Vanessa Hudgens, is cast in a key role, which includes a full vocal workout in the grandstand finale.

Director and co-writer Todd Graff is in familiar territory, having previously made the 2003 low-budget musical Camp about the young wannabes at a summer school for the performing arts.

Here, he delivers a winning rites-of-passage story, mixed with all of the usual ingredients (romance, bullying, a last- gasp victory snatched from the slavering jaws of defeat) without laying on the saccharine too thickly.

Bandslam rocks and rolls to a familiar song sheet, but Graff’s film fizzes with infectious energy, matched by a charm and some droll dialogue that should easily win over older audiences too.

Hudgens and Alyson Michalka excel at the mike, and Lisa Kudrow essays another steely single mother, who fearfully asks her son how his first day was and is told in no uncertain terms “lunch today was like a Nuremberg rally produced by MTV”. Thankfully, the rest of Graff’s film is more upbeat.