Super­son­ic

Remem­ber the ​’90s? Remem­ber Brit­pop, Des Lynam and ladettes? Remem­ber portable CD play­ers and mas­sive phones? Remem­ber when pol­i­tics was cool and rock ​’n’ roll was good? If you just respond­ed in the affir­ma­tive to any of these ques­tions, chances are you’ll get a kick out of this enter­tain­ing new doc­u­men­tary from Spike Island and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll direc­tor Mat White­cross, which puts the stratos­pher­ic rise of Oasis at the head of Cool Britannia’s sun­ny-skied boom.

Cov­er­ing the blis­ter­ing three-year peri­od between May 1993 and August 1996 when the band went from fresh­ly-signed upstarts to pop cul­ture poster boys, Super­son­ic is an affec­tion­ate and unapolo­getic nos­tal­gia trip to rival Shane Mead­ows’ superla­tive Made of Stone from 2013. Com­pris­ing explic­it­ly frank, occa­sion­al­ly pro­found first-hand inter­views with Liam and Noël Gal­lagher (who each exec pro­duce), as well as the oth­er ex-band mem­bers and var­i­ous key play­ers and hang­ers-on, all laid over a wealth of elec­tri­fy­ing, some­times incrim­i­nat­ing archive footage, it’s essen­tial­ly Oasis: The Ear­ly Years as told by those who lived it.

And yet, despite being a ful­ly autho­rised warts-and-all account of the band’s heady suc­cess sto­ry, the media cir­cus that has always fol­lowed the Gal­lagher broth­ers ulti­mate­ly means that the film deliv­ers few gen­uine shocks or sur­pris­es. A stun­ning coun­ter­punch to this arrives late on, with White­cross’ deci­sion to wrap things up at the scene of the band’s great­est tri­umph prov­ing the film’s high point. The now leg­endary Kneb­worth gigs – which, incred­i­bly, one in 20 Britons are said to have applied for tick­ets to – sealed Oasis’ rep­u­ta­tion as the biggest band on the plan­et at the time. Not rev­e­la­to­ry as such, but a jaw-drop­ping spec­ta­cle to behold nonethe­less, made all the more per­ti­nent for the fact it will prob­a­bly nev­er be repeated.

If you’re look­ing for a com­pre­hen­sive biog­ra­phy of one of the defin­ing rock groups of their gen­er­a­tion, this isn’t it. Instead, White­cross serves up a wel­come reminder of the band’s ludi­crous tal­ent. At their brash, bril­liant pomp, Oasis were an irre­sistible force, a bunch of work­ing class lads done good whose refresh­ing atti­tude and image was embraced by a resur­gent British youth cul­ture. But as both Liam and Noël observe, it’s the songs, not the spats, that peo­ple will remem­ber. Watch­ing them blast out infec­tious hits like ​‘Live For­ev­er’, ​‘Some Might Say’ and ​‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ on stage in front of some 125,000 peo­ple, you realise that’s all that ever mattered.