They’ve decided to bring the band back together. They really shouldn’t have bothered.
Choose life.
Choose a sequel.
Choose Danny Boyle.
Choose swearing.
Choose a fucking big budget.
Choose a celebration of male venality.
Choose a flagrant cash grab.
Choose fan service.
Choose soiling a perfectly decent legacy.
Choose misappropriating an iconic property.
Choose brand extensions, sweet marketing opportunities and robust demographic feedback.
Choose sickly nostalgia porn.
Choose affected melancholy and tiresome self-awareness.
Choose soft-focus 8mm inserts.
Choose cosmetic jump-cuts and unnecessary freeze-frames.
Choose an unmemorable pop soundtrack that feels like it was culled from a drivetime radio playlist.
Choose a Prodigy remix of ‘Lust for Life’.
Choose the crushing realisation of creeping depression.
Choose archaic buzzwords and social media namechecks.
Choose awkward cameos by actors who look like they have a gun pressed to their lower spine.
Choose the decision to give Shirley Henderson barely any screentime.
Choose fuddy-duddy sub-Top Gear monologues.
Choose the type of doomsaying techno fear only seen in the letters pages of a Home Counties gardening circular.
Choose horrendously ugly visuals.
Choose having to emphasise just how horrendously ugly the visuals are.
Choose labouring a point to really stress how horrific this film looks.
Choose weak attempts at depicting cultural diversity.
Choose ostentatious sleeve tattoos and oversized flatscreen TVs.
Choose mis-firing comic asides.
Choose Snapchat filters.
Choose a female lead who couldn’t be less interesting if you literally forgot to write her any dialogue because you were too busy playing Pokemon Go.
Choose transforming Francis Begbie into the baddie out of Commando, the pouting prick with chainmail and a handlebar moustache.
Choose smug, unearned redemption.
Choose not having a story.
Choose not having any drama.
Choose a succession of increasingly idiotic and unlikely twists.
Choose needlessly explaining away everything that made the original so unique and interesting.
Choose tedious lad anecdotes and warmed-over wisdom bombs.
Choose artificial empathy and being told that it’s sad to get old.
Choose the sweet memory of PolyGram Filmed Entertainment.
Choose the vim and fire and dirt and sincerity of the original.
Choose a film that carps on about the innocent joys of childhood while urinating on yours.
Choose a final shot that’s staggering in its ineptness.
Choose wanting to bury your head in your hands.
Choose the horrible thought that someone, somewhere thought that this is what the world needed right now.
Choose having to write egregious concept reviews for arty film magazines.
Choose a film that feels like the ageing, obese foreman at a mayonnaise factory explaining the plot and characters of the original Trainspotting to his pet canary.
Choose forgiving, possibly.
Choose forgetting, definitely.
Choose life.
Published 20 Jan 2017
Not going to lie – expectations are pretty low.
Not low enough.
The cinematic equivalent of Madonna’s cover of ‘American Pie’.
By Ashley Clark
This triple-pronged character study of the Apple godhead is bogged down in reams of self-satisfied Sorkinese.
Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut is a miserable, tone-deaf hash of black comic clichés.
By Elena Lazic
Ewan McGregor shoots for the moon with his director debut, an adaptation of one of Philip Roth's best novels.
Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.
