Brennende Langeweile - Bored Teenagers

Alright, the main thesis of the movie which could be 'The British are cooler and wittier than the Germans' might be not quite wrong. But please, dear Tommies, believe us, punk rock in Germany has not always been that boring.

This is quite a bad movie. The acting is very poor, and the director has been one of the worst German directors ever then, and is still now, as far as I know. There is no suspense, no empathy with the characters, no action and no fun. There is not even any remarkable photography or score music which often saves even the worst road movies. To the movie's credit it is to say that this is a TV production and it was made obviously with laymen. The only halfway professional staff is the band The Adverts, who, in 1979 were quite experienced at least in profiling on stage and who are just behaving the way a punk band is expected to behave.

So it is mainly the live footage that makes the film worth watching. The Adverts are performing about half a dozen of their songs including "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" and "Great British Mistake" (which is in the end changed into "Great German Mistake". I wonder whether director Wolfgang Büld noticed that? I guess not, otherwise he had quit making films.) And it is fun to watch the young British punk rockers making their way through German provincial culture of the late Seventies. What remains is a naive comedy and a homage to a legendary band, and if you consider dilettantism as the essence of punk, this movie is punk.

3 points for the music and 1 extra point for the English humor. Sorry, that's all.

In the late seventies director Wolfgang Büld hits the Screen with his historic documentary "Punk in London." The follow up of this rough document in the annals of the youth culture and it's first steps to become a worldwide phenomenon was the production of "Bored Teenagers" for German TV Station ZDF, which showed it in the frame of "Das kleine Fernsehspiel". Filmed at Locations around London, Cologne, Wuppertal and Büld's Hometown Lüdenscheid, it's parted into rare recordings of Adverts Live-Gigs mixed up with a little Storyline of a young couple that supports the Band around TV Smith and Gaye Advert on their Tour across Germany. This Film isn't such a responsibility Masterpiece like Punk in London, but a nice and entertaining one in the history of the Music-films which became popular in Geramny round the early 80s. Especially for me it's a amazing experience to watch this one cause it were filmed at Locations I see every when I leave the house. It's funny to see all this buildings and stores round here filmed 26 years ago or see the Adverts playing in a club were I saw my first Punk-Rock-Concert at the age of 14. Not a perfect movie and really a movie some people would think about it like a boring piece of crap, but a rare one for me that touches my heart on a point I can't locate. I like it