England Is Mine

One of the greatest, tortured unconsummated love affairs in musical history, the story of Morrissey and Marr, is decentered from the story in favour of a series of asexual girlfriend. There's a lot of tedious, plotless nostalgia about being a thwarted pop star for about 80% of the film. The story begins in the final ten minutes of the film, and then just grinds to a halt. Jack Lowden works hard but as an alpha jock actor he is horribly miscast as Morrissey. A wasted opportunity.

Everything you would expect of a pre-Smiths life of Morrissey, dank, a depressing struggle with life, rain, poetry, a little humour, some nice philosophy, a typewriter, a box bedroom wannabe/soon to be, a record player and records set in some 70's and 80's nostalgia. It felt like a cute calm film before a storm of a Smiths film to follow,hopefully. No spoilers from me here other than he doesn't die at the end but in the next film (please) goes on to create the Smiths.

I can't believe they made this film. What a pathetic bunch of crap. Nothing interesting cinematically and absolutely nothing to add to anyway even remotely interested in this artist. Complete trash!

This film tells the story of the life of the young Morrissey, before he made is famous in the bank The Smiths. The film is really boring. Nothing much happens. All we see is a very shy, socially awkward young man who refuses to talk to people. I can't see from the film that he is passionate for music. I can only see the passion for writing. There is little to engage or captivate the viewers. There is not even much music in this film either. The three scenes where posters of Oscar Wilde are seen may insinuate that he is homosexual, but this subplot is so undeveloped that it might have been better just to have skipped it.

Yes it was only a matter of time before the life of Stephen Morrissey was brought to the 'big screen' and here it is. Now this is ostensibly about how crud his life was before he started The Smiths with Jonny Marr. Played by a handsome devil in the shape of Jack Lowden - he was in 'Dunkirk'. It centres around his life in Manchester and his struggles with depression and issues of friendship, trust angst and writing critical letters on the Manc music scene to the NME. All the actors do a good job in their respective roles but is does have a staged quality in places - probably due to the cheap wigs that are sadly a part of period films these days. It started off quite well and I was hooked then it starts to meander and spends soo much time on how he was miserable and working in jobs he hated - well we have all done that so as a vehicle for escapism it sort of fails. Then just as it was starting to show a glimmer of hope.... The end credits roll or is it reel? Anyway I had that - how soon is now feeling and just said of Director Mark Gill - don't take a bow - sorry not recommended at all.