Good story, Not enough for a whole film

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

It's 1985. Brian Jackson (James McAvoy) lives with his widower mother Julie (Catherine Tate) at a seaside town and spends his days with his slacker friends Tone (James Corden) and Spencer (Dominic Cooper). His memory of his late father consists of watching the TV show University Challenge. At Bristol University, he befriends politically active Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall) in his first party. He signs up for the Challenge and helps Alice Harbinson (Alice Eve) cheat her way onto the team. The team is led by the twitchy obsessive Patrick Watts (Benedict Cumberbatch). Brian starts dating the sexy Alice.This is a very appealing young cast. It's got good 80's Brit music. The story has plenty of love-lorn hormonal young people. It's got fun bits. It's great that Alice Eve isn't an airhead or a villain. However, Rebecca Hall needs a lot more screen time in the first half of the film. The tone does careen around sometimes. It's a nice movie and great to see some funny early Cumberbatch.

Just read the book of this film and then immediately watched the movie, and have to say the old cliché is right, the films isn't as good as the book.SPOILERS!!!! There are some key changes in the storyline which change the dynamics of some of the relationships.In the book Spencer is a good friend of his who tries to get him and Alice together and Brian unfairly shuns him after the fight thinking he was hitting on Alice. In the film Spencer is a slime ball who betrays him, when in the book she sleeps with Jackson and then sees another guy at university. Why David Nicholls felt he had to change the characters I don't know, pacing of the film I guess.Movie version Jackson really doesn't match up to the book version, he is painfully embarrassing in the book and much funnier than in the film, although I wonder how that would have looked on film.

I had high hopes for this but although it started promisingly enough it just got more and more predictable and bland until I couldn't wait for it to end. The acting wasn't the problem James Mcavoy was excellent as he usually is but some of the other talented actors James Corden, John Henshaw and Charles Dance in particular were given almost nothing to do. I had thought that being on University Challenge was the main point of the story but that seemed to get lost until near the end. I kept thinking if Richard Curtis had written this at least it would have been funny. I think in trying to appeal to the widest possible audience they compromised far too much and took out all the rough edges which spoilt any chances of this being a good or even half good film. I'll try and not be completely negative and say the first hour was fairly watchable. (5/10)

Like any film its relationship to reality is limited - and having been at Bristol just before the time the film is set (left in 1984) some stuff was not what I remembered - but my main pernickety gripes are that:1. Music - not what I remember from Epicurean/Dug out/Architects apart from Smiths/Cure/New Order - was much more punky/new wave/left field among students 2. Clothes/Style likewise - no-one I knew apart from posh people (though there were lots in Bristol) had any money, though I do remember one female student wearing white stilettos - and even the posh students didn't have new cars (even 2 CVs) or even any car 3. Not enough rain - it rained all the timeThere was one very accurate bit though - slightly intimidating tutor mugging wayward student and helping them realise they could grow up and learn - almost exactly the same thing happened to me (on Whiteladies Road). It would be interesting to know if this was a common experience as I always thought it was unique to me (I am fairly sure tutor pursuing me across the road was almost unique). Apparently now students don't have tutors in most universities, sadly