FLAME:nostalgia ain't what it used to be

FLAME will be a puzzlement to anyone who didn't live through the British music scene in the mid 1970s.
They're going to struggle to understand how and why this film ever got made. 

It stars four of the period's least photogenic musicians (and that's some achievement considering just how unattractive many of the British top 40 acts were in the mid 70s!) in a dingily shot low budget drama which starts out with grand ambitions but then inexplicably races to an unsatisfactory conclusion after apparently running out of ideas or funding or both.
The four guys with perfect faces for music radio are members of the real life rock group.Slade. With 17 consecutive top 20 hits during the 70s they were, according to the book 'British Hit Singles and Albums' the top UK group of the decade and all that success gave someone the bright idea that all the fans of Slade's glam-rock music would also pay money to see them act.
Quite how playing a guitar automatically qualifies someone to be an actor is a mystery to me, but the guys are actually not as bad as I'd anticipated. Guitarist Jim Lea and drummer Don Powell acquit themselves pretty well , while frontman Noddy Holder transitions effortlessly from shouting-singing to shouting-acting and buck-toothed, stupid haircut wearing guitarist Dave Hill  simply play himself.
The supposedly semi-autobiographical story charts their rise from playing the grimy clubs of the West Midlands to chart success as members of the rock band Flame, and the unscrupulous, parasitic managers who latch onto them and exploit them for their own ends. Director Richard Loncraine lavishes much attention on the lads' working class roots and culture, making a genuine effort to portray them as 'real' characters but then undoes all his good work by abandoning the story midway through the second act to rush suddenly to the climax, bringing down the curtain with unseemly and unconvincing haste.
When I got my first radio as a tenth birthday present and discovered pop music Slade were the first band that I was a fan of, so I was disappointed that, with the exception of 'Far far away,' there were none of their big hits on the soundtrack. 
Despite this youthful connection I can't say FLAME produced any pangs of nostalgia. The portrait of England circa 1975 offered in the film is so relentlessly grey, dirty and depressing that my primary response was one of relief that it's no longer like that. I don't begrudge the hour and a half I spent watching this film but I felt that I needed a long shower by the end of it.