Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

[SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL ] Directed by Mat Whitecross

Runtime: 115 min.

Wonderful Ian Dury—England’s most endearing punk-era showman—deserves a biopic worthy of his bouncy, ribald and trenchant songs. The new movie [Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll] ain’t it. And yet, it delivers Dury’s music to a public that may have forgotten him and a generation that’s probably unaware. To discover Dury’s music might be worth the discomfort of sloppy filmmaking.

Screenwriter Paul Viragh seems well versed in Dury’s story: The 35-year-old polio survivor who suffered from myolysis (infantile paralysis) eventually got his moment in the late ’70s. British punk rock changed the rules of pop and music hall culture. Ambitious art-student Dury found a place for his love of music and what he called “the verbals”—classic English articulation that was unapologetically vulgar and witty. His band, The Blockheads (mixed-race misfits who had musical chops), gave pub rock a soulful beat and put out two terrific albums (1978’s New Boots and Panties and 1980’s Do It Yourself) full of sexual innuendo, Limey sass and brilliance.

Too bad director Mat Whitecross felt the need to gild this English Rose with fanciful film tricks—the fussiest over-editing since Moulin Rouge—and a prismatic concept where Dury is introduced narrating his life on stage via song-segments that too-neatly coincide with his actual biography (as if he was too dull to invent). Talented, disabled and horny, Dury was married to Betty (the serene Olivia Williams), who gave birth to two children, yet hooked up with Denise (the sunny Naomi Harris), a wily bohemian chick. Describing himself in “Blackmail Man” as “an Irish cripple, a Scottish Jew,” Dury exulted in the audacity of juggling Betty’s white, art-school permissiveness and Denise’s intelligent, black British difference. He limped to a different drummer—naturally—and his mischief gave listeners a reason to dance.

Whitecross (alas, a Michael Winterbottom acolyte) makes the mistake of presenting Dury as a rebel. Viragh’s script, however, refreshingly outlines his personal drive, showing that Dury fit into punk’s semi-revolution yet called himself an entertainer, changing minds by charming hearts. (Like Johnny Rotten, Dury’s humor kept punk’s naive, leftist sentimentality in check.) Viragh shows Dury (played by wild-eyed Andy Serkis) composing “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards,” his paen to Noel Coward. It’s an instructive moment because Dury surely knew that by invoking genius he needed to live up to it. He did. You can search YouTube clips that show Dury being as risqué as Prince and as impudent as Lou Reed. Part of this film’s disappointment is that Serkis (the mime/actor who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy) portrays Dury as a counterculture cliché. Serkis suggests Dudley Moore doing Bela Lugosi doing Joel Grey in Cabaret. He’s freaky, not sexy, which is a betrayal of Dury’s happy growl and punk-rock success.

Messy collages using period graphics to relay the era’s tumult can’t match the lovely moment that dramatizes Dury and his loner son Baxter (Bill Miner) posing for the New Boots album cover; the montages tell less than a sustained musical routine would. That means Whitecross ignores the jubilance of Dury performing “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” (his only American radio hit—including stations that appreciated the Blockheads’ James Brown jamming). The ballad sequences, “My Old Man” (Ray Winstone plays Dury’s toughlove father in childhood flashbacks) and “Wake Up and Make With Me” (featuring Naomi Harris in flagrante), seem to rip off Julian Schnabel’s artsy lyricism without showing that these tender compositions were so fine the latter even inspired a good Nina Simone cover.

Whitecross and Viragh’s intentions nearly mesh with Dury’s last great record, Spasticus Autisticus, written to salute an official Year of the Disabled event but eventually banned by a miscomprehending BBC. Dury based the song on the climax of Kirk Douglas’ movie Spartacus where freed slaves stood behind their leader, intending an anthem to rally “all the outsiders, uglies and freaks.” It admitted his frustration and defiance with stunning rhythm—dance floor solidarity. The moment Dury rages at those insensitive prudes who don’t get it catches the artist’s fervor and Serkis finally nails it. This hodge-podge biopic is maddening, but it adequately advertises Dury’s infectious discography.