"Killing Bono" The Movie: coming in October

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Killing Bono review | TotalFilm.com

2/5 stars

Music writer Neil McCormick’s wry memoir about growing up in former schoolmate Bono’s shadow reaches the screen with some of its charm intact.

Sadly, it also comes with preposterous embellishments – a criminal subplot here, an assassination attempt there – and a lily-livered eagerness to depict Bono as the nicest singer ever to walk the earth.

Ben Barnes (aka Prince Caspian) brings gusto and a plausible Irish brogue to McCormick’s alter-ego, a hapless rock wannabe who embroils his brother (Robert Sheehan) in an ill-starred quest to rival U2.

Like the late Pete Postlethwaite’s cameo (his final screen credit), alas, the messy, patchy and overlong result elicits more rueful sadness than side-splitting hilarity.
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Mark Kermode (the Uk's leading film critic) gave the film a fairly favourable review, which is surprising because he is a vocal critic of U2 and Bono in particular. Basically he said the same thing as other reviewers - the stuff about a struggling band was good, all the fictional gangsters stuff was unnecessary. Still can't make my mind up whether to see it...

YouTube - Killing Bono reviewed by Mark Kermode
 
corianderstem said:
Uh ... no?
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Have you and LauraMullen not read the book? My mum picked this book up for me on Monday. If she never had bought it then I would never have had bothered purchasing it myself. I've seen it knocking around for years in book shops and the first thing I thought was it sounds like the working of the green eyed monster. In the epilogue at the end he said that he wanted Bono to be played by an actor who was bald, old and fat. Bono is actually neither and even if he was all of these things he'd still be a more interesting person than Niel.

Then Niel took delight in the fact that he was played by a handsome actor commenting that he couldn't believe they found someone as good looking as he was. Well Niel. I am a female who does not find you attractive and never has done. In fact I can think of many older and balding men that are still better looking than you. I shall list: Michael Douglas, Noel Edmunds, Tony Slattery, Alan Sugar, Gordon Brown, Ross Kemp, Bill Clinton, Richard Whitely are to name a few. Oh, and Bono and Adam are also better looking than him, but they are the same age as Niel and don't fit into the categories of being fat and balding.

One triat I hate is jealousy. Please don't tell me no one else sees this.
 
Bono and Neil are pretty close friends, in fact didn't Bono write the prologue at one point in the original print?

Neil is being very tongue in cheek, I don't think it's real bitter jealousy.
 
Yeah, I read the book, and it was hilarious. I don't think he came off as bitter at all. It's tongue-in-cheek, self-depracating humor.
 
Cactus Annie said:
One triat I hate is jealousy. Please don't tell me no one else sees this.
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The entire book deals with the fact that Neil was trying his luck in the rock and roll world at the same time as U2, coming up in the same country at the same time.

Every success U2 seemingly had was mirrored by a defeat for Neil in his attempt to rocket to rock and roll stardom.

It's a darkly funny, self-examining, bitter (but in good spirits) look at his early life. The book is called "Killing Bono" for Christ's sake. If you take the book as serious than you'd find the title offensive as well, no?

Anyway, he's a music critic with a touch of comedian, and those are two professions where one expects to be a bitter outsider, or should at least be close to that to be any good at his job.
 
corianderstem said:
Yeah, I read the book, and it was hilarious. I don't think he came off as bitter at all. It's tongue-in-cheek, self-depracating humor.
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Canadiens1131 said:
The entire book deals with the fact that Neil was trying his luck in the rock and roll world at the same time as U2, coming up in the same country at the same time.

Every success U2 seemingly had was mirrored by a defeat for Neil in his attempt to rocket to rock and roll stardom.

It's a darkly funny, self-examining, bitter (but in good spirits) look at his early life. The book is called "Killing Bono" for Christ's sake. If you take the book as serious than you'd find the title offensive as well, no?

Anyway, he's a music critic with a touch of comedian, and those are two professions where one expects to be a bitter outsider, or should at least be close to that to be any good at his job.
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:up: I liked the book as well. Well written, lots of humour. And Neil's a nice guy.
 
Haven't seen it yet, but a lot of the criticism I've read is about how Bono is made to look so saintly. I think it's impossible for a lot of people to believe that Bono was/is actually a pretty nice person.
 
The idea of the older Neil McCormick finally getting to see his band's cinematic alter-egos living out his rock and roll dream on filmstock is amusing.
 
Neil did say that the finished product was much different than he expected, and a lot of liberties were taken by the film makers. I think he said he cringed while sitting in the theater watching himself on screen, though he was not criticizing the movie at all. He does seem to have a good sense of humor about it. He said when he overheard a movie-goer make a negative comment on something the movie-Neil did, he wanted to shout out, "but that wasn't really what happened!!" :wink:
 
Canadiens1131 said:
The entire book deals with the fact that Neil was trying his luck in the rock and roll world at the same time as U2, coming up in the same country at the same time.

Every success U2 seemingly had was mirrored by a defeat for Neil in his attempt to rocket to rock and roll stardom.

It's a darkly funny, self-examining, bitter (but in good spirits) look at his early life. The book is called "Killing Bono" for Christ's sake. If you take the book as serious than you'd find the title offensive as well, no?

Anyway, he's a music critic with a touch of comedian, and those are two professions where one expects to be a bitter outsider, or should at least be close to that to be any good at his job.
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I love comedy. I am fans of Charlie Brooker, Ricky Gervias, Ryan Stiles, Peter Kay and Harry Hill. I'm following John Cleese, Paul Merton, Colin Mochrie and Stephen Fry on Twitter. Most comedy does involve an element of piss taking and most of these people do very take micky out of other celebrities, yes and Bono included. There used to be a program on the BBC called Room 101. I've seen a few episodes of it. The show involved celebrities coming on and dissing certain stars, things, places or anything that they get annoyed about. I do know that Bono was once put in by a politician I think and that the that the host of the show was Paul Merton. I like Paul Merton he's a very funny very clever comedian who portrays a grumpy man. People used to go on Room 101 and frequently criticized themselves, such as Ian Hislop. In fact someone once came on when Merton was still the host and chose to give Paul Merton a slagging off, to which he himself agreed with.

Niel has never made me laugh.

Not everyone can be in a successful rock band or be multi-millionnaire's. Neil has admitted that he's not a great singer, so that may be a big hurdle for him making it as big as U2. That could be fair, couldn't it? Even those who can't sing but who are successful do have something else going for them. The Passion Of Christ was on TV last night but because I only caught the very end of it, I never heard the music which the film makers supposedly used for this film, unless it was the classical music that was playing during the credits. I've only seen that film once and that was many years ago.
 
Cactus Annie said:
The Passion Of Christ was on TV last night but because I only caught the very end of it, I never heard the music which the film makers supposedly used for this film, unless it was the classical music that was playing during the credits. I've only seen that film once and that was many years ago.
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Is Bono Christ?
 
LPU2 said:
Haven't seen it yet, but a lot of the criticism I've read is about how Bono is made to look so saintly. I think it's impossible for a lot of people to believe that Bono was/is actually a pretty nice person.
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But...he is a nice person? I actually haven't read the book :reject: but since Bono and Neil are friends, I would assume that Neil also considers him to be a "nice person." I don't know how the movie portrays him but he seems to me to be a very nice person :shrug:

But of course it's hard for the legions of haters to imagine. I wish those people would stuff it, the Bono-bashing game is getting extremely old.

Anyway, now that the movie is debuting here, I hope that means it will come to at least sone movie theatres soon. It looks hilarious.
 
I love U2 puns. So the trailer won me over. And that scene of the band in Larry's kitchen saying "Jesus Christ!" over and over was gold. I'll definitely be catching this.
 
secretly alone said:
But...he is a nice person? I actually haven't read the book :reject: but since Bono and Neil are friends, I would assume that Neil also considers him to be a "nice person." I don't know how the movie portrays him but he seems to me to be a very nice person :shrug:

But of course it's hard for the legions of haters to imagine. I wish those people would stuff it, the Bono-bashing game is getting extremely old.

Anyway, now that the movie is debuting here, I hope that means it will come to at least sone movie theatres soon. It looks hilarious.
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And how can you claim someone is a bad person if you don't even know them? My default mode for all people who I don't know that they are nice until I'm proved otherwise. I have much fondness for people and when people behave badly I think to mysel,f "why is hthat?"
 
Truth of the matter is, I highly doubt that any normal joe will be able to just obtain tickets to that very first showing on the Thursday night, so I wouldn't be too upset if you're not there that evening.

That being said, I will be, and I'm sure going to try, but I've not got my hopes up that first show will be available to anyone who isn't involved directly with the movie or the festival itself - we'll see.
 
I've never been myself, but I was under the impression that it's a pretty low-key film festival, not like Sundance where the streets and screenings are jam-packed with celebrities and luxury gift bags.

Are there still big "events" where the usual folk can't get tickets, even though it's a smaller-scale festival?
 
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