That'll BeThe Day v Stardust

Having watched them both on ITV4 over the last couple of nights (after having seen neither for years) I have to say That'll Be The Day wins hands down. It's not a great film but it's a human story with plenty of character development and drama. Stardust on the other hand seems, for the first hour to be a non-stop montage of 60s story-of-rock-n-roll cliches (ok fair enough they may not have been cliches in 74) with almost no sustained dialogue. You get no sense of who McClaine is, where he has come from, what he thinks. The first moment of dramatic tension is his mother's funeral. They could have made so much more of that angle - Jim, in his new life, trying to come to terms with his past, what he's done, but it just isn't taken anywhere. Also in both films the original music sucks the big one - with the exception of Long Live Rock in TBTD, although that song would never have been written in the 50s. The "opera" is so bad it's hilarious. Also notice the 1965 pollwinners concert full of very long mullet-haired tight t-shirted 1974-looking extras.

Thank you for listening!