Great­est Days

Mid­way through Great­est Days, based on the 2017 Take That juke­box musi­cal The Band, a ​‘Shine’ num­ber takes place on an air­port run­way. The song was the band’s big 2007 come­back hit (minus Rob­bie Williams) with vocals by Mark Owen who appears in the music video in a top hat and tails sur­round­ed by cho­rus girls. The scene in the film takes its lead from there, replete with a shot through the bare legs of stew­ardess­es imi­tat­ing Bus­by Berkeley’s 42^nd Street chore­og­ra­phy. Words can­not do jus­tice to how laugh­ably flat-foot­ed this num­ber is, with Ais­ling Bea, Alice Lowe, Jayde Adams, and Ama­ka Okafor plod­ding about on the tar­mac around an Easy­Jet plane. It’s more But­lins than Broadway.

As with direc­tor Coky Giedroyć’s last film, How To Build a Girl based on the mem­oir of the same name by Caitlin Moran, Great­est Days rests sole­ly on ​‘90s nos­tal­gia and Take That’s long-suf­fer­ing fan base of British women. Amongst them is Rachel (Bea), a children’s nurse of the OG Take That gen­er­a­tion – sor­ry, ​‘The Band’ – made up of five unknowns who appear as fig­ments of Rachel’s imag­i­na­tion. Pre­sum­ably this is to com­pen­sate for the fact that Take That’s orig­i­nal quin­tet is now a trio, but it’s still bizarre that the band in the film isn’t meant to be Take That, espe­cial­ly remain­ing mem­bers Howard Don­ald, Gary Bar­low and Mark Owen were involved in pro­duc­tion. Unlike the lads’ real-life coun­ter­parts, these stand-in singers are so devoid of tal­ent or charis­ma that you bare­ly notice they’re there.

The first half of the film fol­lows Rachel and her friends in their school days pri­or to a jaw-drop­ping­ly macabre event that sep­a­rates them for 25 years. When present-day Rachel wins tick­ets to see The Band’s reunion con­cert in Athens, we play catch-up in a lit­er­al­i­sa­tion of ​‘Nev­er For­get’ as we see how the group’s dreams have been realised and dashed. It’s a sec­ond act of shock and awe, invit­ing us to gasp as div­er Claire has gained weight to become Jayde Adams, slut­ty Heather has sworn off the boys as les­bian Alice Lowe, and nerdy Zoe dropped out of uni­ver­si­ty and became a moth­er-of-four played by Ama­ka Okafor.

Each character’s arc is played as a tragedy, sug­gest­ing that they have some­how failed as women in the world. By set­ting the first act large­ly in the past and the sec­ond in the present, it’s hard for the adult cast to make an impres­sion when they even­tu­al­ly show up after the one-hour mark. Lowe knows she is far too good for this and it shows on her face, while Adams works awk­ward­ly with the script’s fat jokes. Like Take That them­selves, it’s hard to believe Great­est Days exists in 2023.

And, of course, these twists of fate are set to the hits of Take That. We get ​‘Relight My Fire’ on a bus which becomes a drag-show-cum-sex-dun­geon, ​‘Said It All’ as an abstract dance num­ber in a Greek prison, and a dirge-like ​‘A Mil­lion Love Songs’ as a funer­al eulo­gy. Few films induce such dizzy­ing tonal whiplash, smash­ing togeth­er past and present in bla­tant imi­ta­tion of Mam­ma Mia! Here We Go Again. But unlike the ABBA musi­cals, the plot sel­dom takes its cue from the lyrics to hilar­i­ous­ly dis­so­nant effect, espe­cial­ly as the great­est hits large­ly play out in chrono­log­i­cal order. It’s hard to imag­ine that any Take That fan would rather lis­ten to bad­ly auto­tuned cov­ers of their favourite songs than the orig­i­nal record­ings. Just hope that some­day soon this will all be some­one else’s (bad) dream.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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