It Couldn't Happen Here

This is one of my most favourite films of all time. I know a couple of people who went to see it at the cinema, and they just didn't get it. I got it on video whilst at college. The film has an essential philosophical message clouded in a blend of surrealism and eighties electronic music. The message is simple - what is time ? Check out the ventriloquists dummy for the answer. A keen observation from most people who call the film a flop is that it does not follow a plot - which is annoying to some people (but look at pulp fiction - what plot?) - its a journey through time and their songs. So surreal I love it. I suspect it makes little sense because they have fit the script around each of the song's stories and stitched each one together. Do films really have to make sense ? Too many films today are based on reality and I thought movie watching was about losing yourself in escapism. This world is real & serious enough. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Give it a chance & Let yourself go.

A real gem of an indie film. British, with great production value, lots of strange dollying shots and some fisheye shots too. The look of it is like a sparce and cheaply-made Terry Gilliam film, with a minimal and very absurdist plot filled with odd references to the Pet Shop Boys songbook, their childhoods, and their love for surrealist art, kitsch gay, biker, slapstick, and Derek Jarman films, as well as touches of Steven Wright jokery and some nice colors. I've got this on tape, and yes, you can't find it anywhere! The Pet Shop Boys are brilliant! Now, if they did it again, they should come up with a real script, and have someone like Baz Luhrmann or better yet David Cronenberg make it. Horrific, asexual, glamorous, poppy, tripped-out, and often quite, quite funny. Neato!

On the back of releasing their album 'Actually', which plays like a greatest hits and includes the iconic "It's a Sin", PSBs decided to release this musical, feature length music video, depending how you'd like to look at it. As a film, it is disjointed, pretentious, with some fairly dreadful dialogue, delivered mostly in Neil Tennant's dull monotone. As a music video, it's perfect, full of odd and surreal goings on, with a few hand fulls of sexual innuendo, interspersed with catholic imagery, nuns in suspenders, a killer priest, Barbara Winsor, an appallingly over the top used car salesman and Clacton acting as the backdrop, the not so proverbial coastal town that they forgot to close down. We all know the landscape, and the songs, fast forward the bad bits by all means, but It Couldn't Happen Here, It's a Sin, Heart, Suberbia and One More Chance will each leave you encapsulated and wondering why more bands don't give this a try. Flawed yes, but Neil and Chris, thank you for give us this.

Makes as much sense as Twin Peaks: The Return. I love it.

Wonderfully eccentric mix of influences - catholicism, run-down seaside towns, naughty nuns, greasy spoon caffs - this has got the lot.

Obviously, not as much fun for people that don't like the Pet Shop Boys - but even they might find some amusements here.