MovieChat Forums > Kidulthood (2006) Discussion > Unrealistic and embarrassing to watch

Unrealistic and embarrassing to watch


I've lived on a council estate in South London all my life and let me assure you, everything you see in this film is untrue. Nobody speaks like that, girls aren't that easy, people don't sit around snorting drugs all day, and nobody gets beaten up on a regular basis. We are generally good, law-abiding people who speak proper English. That's not to say we're complete squares, we're just not violent morons. We may not be rich (some people here don't even have colour TV) but it doesn't mean we can go around mugging people on the streets. I don't know who came up with character design for this film but they must be living in dreamworld. Any visitors expecting to see this behaviour in London will be sorely disappointed.

reply

I couldn't agree more, as a 19 girl living in greater London, i've been through all that stage of my life pretty recently, i can even remember all my "ghetto" friends being pretty hyped about this film, but they saw it more as a glamourised look at life as a "gangsta" rather than what their lives were really like. Its true some of them did put on a tough girl image but none of us really had sex all the time and were on drugs, hell, some of the "tougher image" girls thought me and my three friends were mad when we started getting drunk at 14. The truth was, their parents were pretty strict and although they'd like to believe they were just like the people in Kidulthood, they were nothing like them. This isn't to say there genuinely aint people like this around but they are deffo in the minority.

reply

Yeah, I agree. It is a gross embellishment of reality. The fact that all those events take place in one day make it a ridiculous watch to be honest.

reply

Where were the subtitles? A lot of the dialogue was jumble ending with "man". People really don't talk like that in London!!

reply

It's not unrealistic at all!!! Anyone who lives in London will verify the amount of mindless violence youths get into these days.
Sadly, some kids DO speak like that!
Unfortunately (or fortunately depends on whcih way you look at it) some girls ARE that easy.
In terms or drugs, yes it is very unrealistic for school kids to spend to snorting as opposed to just smoking weed but this is a movie and things need to be dramatized.
If you think London is full of good "law-abiding" people, its you living in the Dreamworld.

reply

Totally agree on that mate, there are no law abiding people around these days, everyones breaking the law one way or another, you also get victims in the film that happen to be law abiding citizens. What the hell though? its a film right? it can be made exaggerating at times, and theres nothing wrong with that, as long as the story becomes more compelling. ;)

reply

The film isn't about what all teenagers or all people from estates are like its about what of them are like. There are kids like this I know cause I've met them (though I've never met anyone as extreme as Becky).

reply

Although it's exaggerated and not everyone is like the characters in this film the characters are not unlike certain people in areas of London.

reply

I had a very easy girlfriend, only to me :D

reply

I totally agree, I turned the film off half way in I was so embarrassed by it's pathetic attempts to shock and make us think that all poor people are criminal, whoring, drug snorting scum.

I grew up on a council estate and went to a rather lame comprehensive, not in London however, and whilst some people were bullied etc, most people are good.

Being poor does not instantly make you thick, violent, a whore or drug addict. Most children are good, if perhaps a little misguided, and true thugs like the people portrayed in this film are rare.

This film is an exploitative play to those lower middle class muppets who get their opinions spoon fed to them in the Daily Mail and other tabloid press.

The director should be ashamed of himself for this nasty dross.

--
What's the difference between a chicken

reply

The film looked very much in a tradition of British teenage exploitation yob films. In the 70s and 80s these films were wrapped in sociological justifications for making them but most of its audiences really came to see a young Ray Winestone wack people round the head with a sock full of snooker balls.

reply

I read The Times my good man.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Jimi Hendrix

reply

A lot of young people DO speak like that, linguists have carried out studies on it, it's a phenomenon seen across Britain in inner-city areas where people from different backgrounds mix, the vocabulary includes words from Jamaican patois, Nigerian slang and South Asian languages to name a few.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Jimi Hendrix

reply

So it conveys a survival advantage because it is interchangable as a language between all the cultures that have to compete\cooperate?

--
What's the difference between a chicken

reply

I dont live in london and i know people just like the characters in the film and have experienced similar events.

Your naive and arrogant to think this isnt a realistic portrayal.

I can see your an idiot by you trying to prove you live on a council state by saying ' some people dont even have colour tvs'

*beep* off your some middle class nobhead trying to portray themselves as council class

reply

I can't really speak for the Brits as I'm American but I don't think this is a wholly inaccurate depiction of today's teenagers. Go into just about any middle school here in America in a working-class neighborhood and you're likely to find 2 or 3 pregnant 13 year olds (more if you go to urban areas). It seems like kids today are also a lot more likely to try drugs a lot sooner than they otherwise would, most likely due to the fact that they have easier access to them than they used to. However, I don't think this is natural for teenagers act like this, it's a case of life imitating art. Early 2000's American pop culture sent a really ****ed up message to impressionable kids and led them to believe what they saw on TV was how people actually acted.

I think a lot of people who watched this movie missed what was in my opinion the central point of it. It was a critique of young teenagers who try to act like they're adults and the consequences of their actions when they realize they weren't prepared to make those adult decisions after all.

I will say one thing though, if this movie was even a semi-accurate depiction of London slum life, they should consider themselves lucky. I grew up poor in run-down trailer parks, if you want to know what my environment looked like growing up check out a movie called "Gummo".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119237/

reply

Living in North London and going to an Inner City School, I found that parts of this film were slightly exaggerated and other parts were not realistic enough. Taken as a whole, the film is actually quite an accurate representation of an inner city school.

reply

Agreed. Dude tells the chick he will spread a rumor that her vag stinx if she doesn't free up the panties??!! Ha !!

reply

To the morons who think everyone in england is law abiding and nice.....you are totally delusional, I had a gang of tards like the ones depicted in this film, actually trying to kill me through the last two years of my school life, and that was back in the 90's....this is very realistic in my opinion

reply