Please don't spend money on this.

Great Film overall

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Never sags. Lead actor Richard Dormer is worth the watching and he sings as well! The character of Terri Hooley is portrayed as funny, energetic, brave, a bit manic and the movie matches him on all points.

The film looks back nostalgically at the seventies. Those like the movies lead, Terry, who hoped that Punk Rock would prove more than a passing fad were to be disappointed. By the late seventies disco was the dominant element in popular music in Belfast, especially among the young, bringing thousands of kids together. Punk was a minority interest. However the film can still be seen as a celebration of punk, a time which saw the birth of a new, small but exuberant youth culture as young people asserted their tastes in music and fashion which were quite different to those of their elders/peers. In that sense at least, the punks of the late seventies had "never had it so good". But in the end the punks ran out of steam and melted back into the greyness of Belfast leaving no legacy what-so-ever. What is particularly disappointing is that the film makes a virtue out of failure.

A good film to go and see. The protagonist, Terri Hooley, is a self obsessed music lover who stumbles across punk while running his independent record shop in Belfast in the late 70's early 80's and goes about promoting and recording punk bands from Northern Ireland.The acting is great, great script and unlike the Commitments this is a true story.Positives: Filmed in colour and atmosphere that portrays the era. The subtle humour and the last line of the movie which I will not give away but will stand as a great movie quote.Negatives: Adrian Dunbar's wig - Cheap is not the word for it.

This is a biopic about Terri Hooley, the owner of Good Vibrations record shop and record label. His biggest claim to fame was in getting The Undertones seminal single Teenage Kicks to DJ John Peel. Considering that this became Peel's favourite song of all time, this is something of note. I hadn't heard of Hooley, or Good Vibrations but this isn't too surprising seeing as – aside from The Undertones who were only involved with him briefly – the other punk bands on his label were very minor players such as The Outcasts and Rudi. It's probably fair to say that the movie overstates the significance of Hooley and of Belfast as a punk capital.Nevertheless, this is still a good film. It successfully illustrates how punk rock served a different purpose in Belfast compared to most other places. It happened during the height of The Troubles and music was a means of bringing people together from both sides of the fence, while the youthful anger of punk rock tapped into something very relevant in a population living in grim times with the fear of violence a constant situation. To help give a better feel for the times there are actual newsreels from the period spliced into the story. Although the politics always hover in the background and never really move into the central ground of the story. This is above all a story about the love of music and its power to overcome wider concerns. Although, admittedly it failed to bring an end to the civil war, seeing as it lasted for a further twenty years.The story is a fairly standard feel-good biopic with a little bit of adverse drama thrown in about two thirds of the way in. In fairness, it's only being true to its source material which is fairly slight to begin with. The period setting is captured quite well in its beige horror although there were some (very) dodgy wigs on display. This will connect most with folks who remember the punk times, especially ones who were in Belfast at the time. But it is a good film about a minor piece of music history.