n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I hadn't even heard of the Northern Soul movement until I made We Are Kings with Rita Graham, who is one of their stars and a former Raelette. Then someone showed me clips of the Northern Soul girl dancing in the streets to the soul music, and of course I became a convert. What a great terrain for movie-making...the best soul songs, the classics, that I grew up with (yes I am from THAT generation). We had a guy in our class in prep school in 1969 that lived in Detroit and he started showing up with Motown records after Christmas vacation...our minds were blown that there was this alternative to the Beatles and the Doors and the Jefferson Airplane, and all new dance moves. So Northern Soul really gets it and I loved the story and the filmmaking was spot on. Highly recommended!

I've often reflected that English film making hasn't done enough to explore the English experience (compared for example to American reflexiveness in film which has been ongoing part of US cinema since the start), so I find films which look at England's cultural and social experiences with a little bit of favorable bias, and find in this film, about a phenomena probably little known outside of the UK something quite welcoming. Northern Soul, for anyone unfamiliar was a dance/party movement based on obscure American soul music which appeared in Manchester (among other places) in the late 1960s and who's preference, unlike the tastes of the capitol, tended towards lesser known soul music, often of a more up-tempo character. Wikipedia reports that the relative rarity of these soul sounds(as opposed to mainstream, commercially viable Motown sound) made for an environment where a single DJ might have the only pressing of a certain track. The best songs were naturally coveted and DJs might even travel to the US in search of new songs to bring to the dance floor. An entire subculture of music, dance and fashion emerge out of this milieu. That said, this film isn't a documentary and doesn't pretend to be. The story follows the friendship of two disaffected youth as they emerge deeper into and discover themselves through a nascent musical culture. For one of them it's a path of self-destruction and for the other self awakening. Gritty in its realism, Northern Soul embraces a darker side of English working-class society and views the movement, perhaps not unfairly as a respite from the malaise of urban-industrial England in the 1970s. That it occasionally overplays the meme is an evident enough fault and puts the main characters into transformations of identity that aren't always fully convincing (Steve Coogan plays a particularly loathsome secondary school teacher well, if not to slight excess). Matt, one of the film's protagonists transforms rather quickly from enthusiastic teen to angry firebrand in a not entirely nuanced way. We see this again in the ending who's glib tidiness is slightly out of tune with the film as a whole. The presence of drugs as antidote to social malaise comes as no surprise, and inevitably there is tragedy. Northern Soul does at times play that hand also a bit strongly, even as the music recedes into a background role to the more sobering realities in the front. The devolution from euphoria to dystopia where drugs become involved is not a new idea in cinema (or elsewhere) and it's truth is no less evident here. Still, the film is convincingly realized with terrific performances and tight, thematically consistent cinematography that never releases the viewer from a sense that the the straitjacket has yet to be loosed - something that music alone is incapable of doing. The music, the dance and the sheer expressiveness of the club scene provide balance and give the viewer a glimpse into the scene, a kind of English Saturday Night Fever. Enjoyable but not without faults, this is a great look at a time and place and tells a story that needs to be told.

I was really looking forward to seeing this film. I am and always have been a Soul music lover and Northern Soul fanatic. I was hoping to see how the Northern Soul culture developed alongside the pop scene in the 1970's. The beginning certainly started like this and reminded me of my youth club days. It showed how the music and scene became infectious and more and more people wanted to be involved. Unfortunately, for me, it went downhill very quickly. It is basically a film about the drug scene, with a Northern Soul theme running in the background. I went to Wigan several times and many other all nighters. I accept that some people did take drugs but in my opinion it was nothing like what was portrayed in the film. Having said that, the music and dancing scenes were terrific, although there are some of my favourite songs on the released CD set that were not in the film. At the end of the day it is a fictional film, based on facts from individuals from the time and if it was a film purely based upon the music and culture, then I suppose it would not have a very wide audience. Well done Elaine and thank you for allowing me to fondly reminisce about the wonderful memories of my younger days.

This is a movie to immerse yourself in, to lose yourself in, to get into the groove of. It's tremendous in the way that you plunge headlong into some sweaty dj-dysfunction, and the perils of the needle, whilst laughing almost all the way. The main protagonist develops quite a set of pecs over the duration, we all said we felt like dancing afterwards, this is an energetic film.But it's carefully shot, wonderfully acted, beautifully sounding, reportage of the scene and all the better for it, with some quite superb performances as a result. You will have the time of your life. Enjoy.