Review of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" mentions The Smiths

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The Perks Of Being A Wallflower Review - Little White Lies

Excerpt:

...Miller steals the film whenever he’s on camera, his natural energy and lack of self-consciousness lifting the thin material. But it’s not enough. And we’ve really got to have a moratorium on movies in which teenagers talk about how cool The Smiths are. It makes the film and its characters look deeply uncool and disconnected. Nobody ever talks about how cool The Smiths are. They never have and they never will. Get over it.



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This reviewer is pretty disconnected. If you go to any high school, especially one in southern california, chances are you'll see a popular girl wearing a smiths shirt. The Smiths were pretty huge at my high school and I only graduated 3 years ago.
 
the review is very cynical, i thought it was decent. 7/10
 
Funny.I often find when I`m wearing a Smiths or Morrissey shirt and I run into another fan they often want to talk about them.Funnily enough that`s the only time I`m not tongue tied when talking to someone I don`t know.I`m not in high school though.:D

I think Morrissey/The Smiths are beyond cool!:guitar:
 
I partly agree with Mark Kermode when he said "I love the The Smiths, but I hate people in films who love The Smiths'. There's always something a bit nauseating about it.

The film itself wasn't too bad but not brilliant. Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' deals with similar themes far better.
 
I partly agree with Mark Kermode when he said "I love the The Smiths, but I hate people in films who love The Smiths'. There's always something a bit nauseating about it.

The film itself wasn't too bad but not brilliant. Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' deals with similar themes far better.

I'd go a bit further; currently, I love The Smiths, but I hate people in real life who love The Smiths. They've become a 't-shirt band', for some.
 
I partly agree with Mark Kermode when he said "I love the The Smiths, but I hate people in films who love The Smiths'. There's always something a bit nauseating about it.

The film itself wasn't too bad but not brilliant. Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' deals with similar themes far better.
Submarine is a brilliant film, with a really good acoustic soundtrack too (Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys fame). Thoroughly recommended.

I actually really enjoyed Perks, and not just because of the occasional Smiths poster in the background (although it's always nice to see Moz on the big-screen!)
 
the review is very cynical, i thought it was decent. 7/10

Yeah, I agree totally. I submitted this article and I wasn’t expecting much but this was a very enjoyable, well paced solid teen movie. And it had Paul Rudd. Can’t think of much to fault it and I was especially impressed by the way they handled music. It wasn’t obnoxious and drew attention to itself like some films do with their “look at us with our cool music taste!” but it was very unobtrusive as it should be. I think it helped that the characters weren’t annoying as f*** hipsters and were likeable.

What most interested me about this was the use of “Asleep” (and a solo Moz classic also showed up which thrilled me to bits and made me swoon, literally the best choices), for once not the usual Please Please Please (showing that this in fact is of the lineage of that John Hughes type angst teen film and The Smiths are always a feature of this). It was handled beautifully and it seemed so difficult to pull off such an intimate song. And it had stuff like Bowie’s “Heroes”. I think this will get kids of today into this music, downloading it off iTunes so job well done.

It also has a Smithsian vibe in general with a very sad subplot. Not as dark as the similar Donnie Darko which I found overrated, but there in a subtle way. That kid was way too cute to be a wallflower – that’s not how it works! But great reflection of high school cliques. I also wasn’t sure when it was meant to be set – 90s I presume? Given Cracker’s Low and L7 being on the soundtrack.. you’d assume 80s at first but it never called itself to that with the fashions fairly bland and normal.

That reviewer is way off base. At first, though his tone sounded derogatory I just thought he was saying that it was unrealistic for people to talk about The Smiths like that and they were more a personal thing. But that attack was really unwarranted, it’s not like that at all in the context of the scene and very brief, why focus in on that?! Really unfair to trash it just cause he has an axe to grind after they said something that made him roll his eyes. And it has a high score on rotten tomatoes so talk about out of step.
 
Besides Asleep being in the film, Seasick Yet Still Docked is as well. Though it is not on the film's soundtrack. Seasick is featured during a party scene... the song plays on the stereo from Charlie's mixed tape. It is strange, but I can't see any mention of Seasick in the film's credits, wiki, or reviews.

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Here are The Smiths and Moz posters shown in the film. Charlie's bedroom wall...

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Sam's bedroom wall...

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