STARDUST

Stardust picks up a few years after the end of the film That'll Be The Day. Jim MacLaine (David Essex) has formed a band (The Stray Cats) and become a big star. So big, he decides he no longer needs his band and goes solo. In the end, fame and riches have a detrimental effect on his personal life

Besides Davie Essex, Stardust features several other musicians: Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Keith Moon, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds (who went on in real life to produce the rockabilly band Stray Cats), and Paul Nicholas. There's a lot more music performed in this movie than there was in That'll Be The Day (where most of the music was on the soundtrack), but the soundtrack here is also filled with great songs from the era (in fact, more people bought the soundtrack than ever saw this film).

While I enjoyed That'll Be The Day immensely, I was a little bit let down viewing Stardust. It's not a bad film, but the hackneyed storyline about a musician who thinks he's too big for the band he's in, goes solo and puts out egocentric music, gets hooked on drugs, pines for the old days, and o.d.'s in the end, just didn't do it for me. Even though Jim MacLaine was somewhat of an unlikable character in the That'll Be The Day, I still rooted for him. In this second feature, I never felt or cared much about MacLaine. Still, this film is well worth seeing and is almost a requirement if you've seen the first movie.

THAT'LL BE THE DAY

That'll Be The Day stars David Essex as Jim MacLaine, a young man in search of his own identity. The film is based on Nilsson's song "1941" and also has some parallels to the life of John Lennon. The movie begins in the late 1950's with MacLaine's father abandoning his family after WWII (a theme which I have seen in several British films set in this era) and ends in the early 1960's with MacLaine abandoning his own family for the world of rock and roll.

After dropping out of high school, MacLaine works a number of dead end jobs, and while working as a barman at a holiday camp he meets Mike (Ringo Starr) who becomes his mentor. Ringo is superb in his part, as good as any other actor in the film. I imagine his familiarity with the era helped a lot in making his character so believable. Billy Fury plays Stormy Tempest (based on Rory Storm) in the house band at the camp's bar. The drummer for the band is Keith Moon of The Who, who also has a small acting part. Moon has one of my favorite lines in the film, when asked if he has ever thought about writing his own songs, he replies "you got to be American to write Rock and Roll songs".

Most of the music in That'll Be The Day is on the soundtrack (comparable to the American Graffiti soundtrack), but besides the Stormy Tempest band, there are only two other bands in the movie: a Trad Band and an early rock and roll band (featuring Eugene Wallace as the lead singer). After seeing the rock and roll band, MacLaine/Essex buys a guitar and the film abruptly ends, and MacLaine's story is continued in the film's sequel, Stardust.