Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Like most of the above reviewers say, this movie is a good film for a laugh and plenty of outrageous behaviour from the protagonist, Lynda. A terrific reproduction of 50s Britain - right down to the dressing gown patterns and minor consumer products. But what is it she really wants and what does she learn from her foolish behaviour? 'Nothing' seems to be the answer. And this 'nothing' seems to be the major theme. It is a film about folly.In many ways Lynda's path is boringly predictable: She has no understanding of the man who manipulates her, nor of the future consequences of her rudeness and impulsive behaviour. One wonders what amount of social realism is represented here for an unmarried mother of the period. Poorly paid jobs, lack of support, a low income to further disable somebody with little patience and understanding of the situation she has largely created for herself. A fun attitude, temporary prettiness and her fast-disappearing youth will not go that far.

Lynda Mansell (Emily Lloyd) is a brash rebellious teenager in a staid post-war English seaside town. She is crude, flirtatious and loves to insult with "Up your bum". She has wild mood swings and constantly gets fired from her jobs. She gets sent to a psychiatrist. She has flings. Her father's bookie pushes his way into her life and she joins in an affair that results in a pregnancy.Emily Lloyd is fantastic. As a drama, the movie needs more tension. She could be challenged by a wife. Or else, she has to have something that could be lost by her behavior. None of the guys are worth a dime. By the movie's own account, it's inevitable that she would separate from her father. If there are no stakes, there is no danger. As a comedy, it has one extremely funny sequence. It's hilarious when she gets fired. The movie needs a few more comedic sequences like that. She needs a partner to play the comedy off of. Emily Lloyd is great but she's alone too much.

With another actress in the lead, this film could have been another entry in the long, venerable line of British films about the misery of working-class life, a genre that stretches from "kitchen sink" classics like "Room at the Top" and "A Taste of Honey" (wonderfully ironic titles, of course) to such Mike Leigh bleakfests as "Meantime" and "All or Nothing." However, this film stars Emily Lloyd. Her character of Lynda seems written as a fragile, wounded creature driven to extreme behavior by emotional neglect (her mother died when she was young and her father is a stern, distant dope) and a rigid, oppressive social hierarchy (she suffers after being used and abandoned by a series of heartless men who are either older or wealthier than herself). As played by Emily Lloyd, however, Lynda is a joyful nymphomaniac who delights in offending people, kind of a "Happy Hooker Goes to Liverpool." Her outrageous behavior seems less a symptom of willful self-destructiveness than an animating demon impulse. In her dalliances with men, she seems to be seeking sexual satisfaction ("it's very nice, but is that all there is?") instead of love and security. Which makes her a distinctly post-feminist heroine out of "Sex and the City" instead of a victim of injustice out of a Theodore Dreiser novel. Which makes her completely out of sync with the rest of this gray, deterministic film. It doesn't help that Emily Lloyd, at least here, is so beautiful that she's literally luminous -- she seems to glow with a light that isn't shining on anything else in the film. Plus she's so vital and boisterous that we don't believe the circumstances which should be destroying her would even slow her down all that much. The key scene, which will either delight or disgust you, comes midway through the movie when lovely young Lynda takes a midnight stroll in her garden and ends up gamboling about, waking the neighbors (neighbours?) by screaming "up your BUUUUUUUUMMMMM!" at the top of her lungs. Is she a wounded soul begging for love and tolerance? A free spirit kicking against the pricks? A brat who needs to be spanked? Your answer to this question will determine your view of "Wish You Were Here."

I seem to be the odd one out on this movie. This is a coming of age movie about a girl whose irritating manner, self-absorption, obnoxiously rude attempts to shock those around her, and licentious behavior are all apparently excused because her mother died.Because her mother died, she is cruel toward her father and sweet sister.Because her mother died, she is an exhibitionist.Because her mother died, she is promiscuous.Because her mother died, she curses to shock others.Because her mother died, she has no interest in any work, and in fact deliberately upsets every workplace.Because her mother died, she is very rude toward any customer.Because her mother died, she performs strip teases in public.Because her mother died, she is vain, constantly asking others to flatter her.Because her mother died, she is insulting toward anyone with whom she works or serves.*spoiler* We root against her throughout the film - perhaps most over her failure to allow the father to share the child she has by a man whose initial lust has turned to caring, thus condemning her child to a one parent family. ("It's all mine" are her last words in the film - and could be her motto).But you see, her mother died some years before. This is why she has no redeeming qualities. Her lack of intelligence, her humorless attempts to shock, her rudeness - her hateful behavior toward her sweet little sister - it's all because she's confused because her mother died.Thus, she gives no one in the film (or the audience) any reason whatsoever to like her. But that's due to the fact that her mother died.Emily Lloyd does give a bravura performance - it is rare for the complete self-absorption, the absence of intelligence, the gross conduct to be displayed in so believable a way in one person. Yet you DO feel as if you have met and despised this girl in your own life.