Two feuding rock stars get handcuffed together for 24 hours at a music festival where they are both due to perform.
The film is dotted with moments of inspiration where Mackenzie’s admirable ambition pays off.
It’s not quite Before Sunrise with mud and portaloos then, but warm vibes, buzzy crowd scenes and the two leads’ enthusiasm will pull you through to the morning after.
The best thing about David Mackenzie's ragged musical is that it's only 80 minutes long.
Mackenzie (Young Adam, Hallam Foe, Spread) can’t be faulted for the energy and determination he brings to the party but the resulting movie plays out like a Children’s Film Foundation picture with tunes. Should do decent business, though, with those keen to rekindle summer memories of mud, wellies and music.
You Instead attempts to capture the sights, sounds and smells of Britain's most rambunctious music festival, T in the Park. For the most part, it’s successful.
It’s amiable in spots, but making half the characters American gives it an unfortunate am-dram feel, replacing the local flavour we want with a cheap sort of additive tang.
You have to hope that David Mackenzie and his cast had a nice time making You Instead. For the audience, there is only the prospect of sitting through a jaw-droppingly self-indulgent, shallow, smug if mercifully brief feature with a plot that looks like the outline for a pop video.
The pair muster some chemistry but it's the big musical moments - including a gusto-packed Soft Cell riff - that impress most. Sadly, the pair's romance is predictable and the plot unfolds with all the freshness of a two day old fish supper.
The film shouldn't work, and for the most part it doesn't; but it left me smiling.
Despite a grungy charm, T in the Park film experiment is a failure.
They're not exactly Madeleine Carroll and Robert Donat in The Thirty-Nine Steps, but the film has its moments.
Less fun at the festival and more time on the characters, please.
The script is full of howlers and any spontaneity supplied by the backdrop is killed by the cast's inability to interact in a convincing fashion with real punters on site.
Over the course of the film, Adam and Tena do all the things Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll didn't dare do (or even think of doing) in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. But they generate little fun or chemistry, and the cliches come as thick and slick as the Woodstock-style mud churned up around them.
The magic of T in the Park outdoes Harry Potter, reckons Natalia Tena
How 85,000 T in the Park extras helped create You Instead
General release. Check local listings for show times.
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness from Friday November 4, 2011, until Tuesday November 8, 2011. More info: www.eden-court.co.uk
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