The biopic of Ian Dury, one of England's most original and influential singer-songwriters of the last 30 years. Crippled by polio as a young boy, Durywent on to become one of the founders of the 1970s punk movement.
Reviews
Channel 4 Film
Ali Catterall
"Ian, you feel, would have really enjoyed this film, as playful and rough around the gills as he was, with a gleefully inventive aesthetic; hardly surprising with legends like Brian Tufano behind the camera."
10/01/2010
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"The Dury biopic is done the best way it could, as a four-way collision at the crossroads of audiovisual culture. From one direction comes the music – “Billericay Dickie” and the like blasted out in Dury’s punk music-hall fashion – while from the other three come the echt-Brecht narrative boldnesses (Dury’s youth and childhood done as stylised tableaux vivants), the pantomimic performances (brilliantly effective in Andy Serkis’s Dury, a cockney demon king with a hyperreal-homely domestic life) and the gaily painted pantechnicon bringing digitised psychedelia."
07/01/2009
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"A barnstorming, passionate performance from Andy Serkis brings 1970s music legend Ian Dury stunningly back to life in this gutsy biopic, written by Paul Viragh, directed by Mat Whitecross and produced by Serkis himself. It's obviously a labour of love, but it never looks laborious."
07/01/2009
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The Observer
Philip French
"There are some remarkable sequences in this intentionally hectic whirlwind of a movie that in various ways recalls Fellini's 8½ and Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People... The acting generally is first-class, but what holds the film together is the performance of Andy Serkis."
11/01/2010
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The Times
Kevin Maher
"Dury, all rage and redemption, is a tricky central character, but the miracle here is that he is somehow humanised without being tamed."
09/01/2010
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Time Out
Tom Huddleston
"This is just gorgeous, celebratory cinema, unfettered and courageous, if unashamedly scattershot, much like the man himself. Forget young Lennon and his tedious Oedipal angst – this is the one by which a new decade of music movies will be judged."
05/01/2010
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The Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Rommey
"While it feels slapdash rather than properly punk-collage ragged, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is an honest job, and it makes a good case for including Dury's work and personality in any Brit-culture list of Reasons to be Cheerful."
10/01/2010
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
"In an age of X Factor commercialism, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is a reminder that pop was once a happy mental home for the lonely and the loony. This film is a British celebration of outsiderdom — be it the creative or the crippled — that is never sentimental."
10/01/2010
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"This is not the most organised of biopics, and misses out information that would normally be considered essential."
08/01/2010
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Empire Magazine
Philip Wilding
"A sometimes whimsical and magical take on the life of one of Britain’s most artistically charged rock stars. Serkis shines in his role as the troubled singer."
10/01/2010
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"Yet what the film tries to project as Dury's loveable irascibility too often just looks like charmlessness; given that the portrait was sanctioned by his son Baxter, you suspect that the rock-star bad behaviour might have been even worse than it's depicted here. It's been made with love and respect, though in the long run it may not do much to enhance its subject's reputation."
08/01/2010
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The Times
Ben Machell
"And the focus remains so tightly on Dury that there is little space to give the context of his life and rise, which even if you’re already a fan, is important. You’re never entirely sure where you are, both in time and place; there are no allusions to the empowering nature of punk that catalyses the tale; and strangest of all, there’s not enough made of the funny, funky music that made him filmworthy in the first place. The result, too often, rings like a missed beat."
08/01/2010
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