Annika Andersson at MovieZine reviews the Gyllene Tider movie and gives 4/5.
Beautiful tribute to a beloved boy band
Here we have a real happy pill! The film about Gyllene Tider is as happy and irresistible as the music. It twitches in the feet that want to stomp the beat and it’s hard not to sing along. A movie that makes you smile.
We seem to be riding a wave of biopics about famous artists right now, so it is perhaps not entirely unexpected that the time has also come for Swedish pop sensation Gyllene Tider to get their own film. And what a happy pill it is! The movie proves as irresistibly cheerful and inviting as the music.
The opening text tells us that we will see the (almost) true story of boy band Gyllene Tider. Per Gessle (Valdemar Wahlbeck) is the school’s ambitious outsider in the high school in Halmstad. He manages to get out of conscription, but doesn’t want to become a plumber like his father and grandfather. He is more like his mother, he tries to explain it to his father during the obligatory what-are-you-going-to-do-when-you-grow-up talk. What, are you going to be a housewife?
Because Per doesn’t really know what he wants – until the day he drives a group of musicians with (the fictitious) prog player Tobbe (Felix Sandman) in the lead and stops to listen to their rehearsal. A cataclysmic experience, because he already has a lot of lyrics in a box. He’s going to start a band!
He recruits “MP” (Ville Löfgren), and after advertising locally on his homemade radio channel, they find Micke (Phoenix Parnevik), Anders (Lancelot Hedman Graaf) and Göran (Xawier Kulas). The boys are young and happy and well-mannered, no drugs and rock’n’roll here. They succeed with cunning, enthusiasm and persistence in quickly getting a record deal with EMI. The rest is, as they say, history.
We see several new faces among the actors, who, however, may not always have similarities in appearance with the original band members. The classic male model beauty Wahlbeck, for example, doesn’t look like Gessle at all, nor does he have his manners or energy. When he refers to another band member as “the handsome one”, you have to use your imagination.
But all the movie band members convey the wonderful feeling of being young, having fun, and belonging together. Life is an adventure and the boys are invincible! It’s a real success story, even if Per is going through a family tragedy at the same time. But as a feel-good film, it doesn’t delve too deeply into any sorrows and worries. It’s a movie that makes you sit and smile. A movie that makes you happy.
Sure, it can feel a bit sugary sometimes, like when a young Marie Fredriksson Per doesn’t know yet puts her hand on his heart and sort of knows that he has already met his big love, if only he dares to seek her out. The story is well told without feeling artificial for that reason. It flows smoothly and nicely under the direction of Per Simonsson (“The Thieves’ Christmas” /Tjuvarnas jul/, “Selmas saga”, “Black Lake” /Svartsjön/). Johan Palm’s camera work is traditional and mostly static, but there are some emotional sequences here that are playfully emphasized by letting the electricity in the room crackle.
But mostly, the film leaves a sense of hilarity. You want to go home and continue to groove to the infectious melodies. One is happy that Gessle chose music, and that the film has been made. Because, as I said, it is as hard to resist as the music!
