To me, this movie is perfection.

Overrated

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning Manchester, 1990. Dylan (Jack O' Connoll) and Matt (Henry Lloyd Hughes) are two scallywags who get by nicking fruit machines from pubs, until they spot a marketing opportunity in the shape of the emerging acid house/rave culture that is springing up in towns and cities across the UK, with hordes of disenfranchised, disaffected young folk breaking into abandoned warehouses to get off their faces and dance the night away, only for the authorities to clamp down on them. Dylan and Matt propose the biggest rave yet, and enlist the help of a top DJ to help see them over. However, it's not long before drugs arrive on the scene and the criminal element involved plunge the lads into a new and dangerous world that threatens to destroy everything they've worked to build.Ever since it arrived over from Ibiza in the late 80s, rave culture has played it's inimitable part in the music, fashion and style of a certain generation of young people, and what it went to lead on to was arguably it's greatest achievement. Weekender attempts to be a story based around this phenomenon and is squarely aimed at the audience the film is depicting. At the beginning it starts out as sort of style over substance, opening with the start of what promises to be a funky, lively soundtrack featuring just the sort of tunes that made that period in musical history so memorable. The soundtrack remains the best asset of the film, but it's worth sticking with the story, because although it retains it's sense of being frenetic and sort of jumbled and incoherent, it does develop into a more engaging portrayal of two lads living in a very recent time, caught up in an emerging world with unexpected dangers cropping up in it. The manner of the film is in line with it's style, with it's sped up shots and blurry camera moments giving it it's added authenticity.Performances wise, O' Connoll is convincing in another notch to his resume, while Hughes, best known as the bully in The Inbetweeners, is pretty decent support. Emily Barclay and Zawe Ashton are the chicks on display, and they make their mark on the film.The problem with Karl Golden's film is it sometimes (most disasterously at the beginning) gets lost in it's own style and doesn't have an engaging story to follow. But it still comes off as a fairly decent thriller, inspiringly set against the back drop a lot of people young back then can remember. ***

A short satisfying romp. Deceptively satisfying as the ending is not so. I really got to like the characters and would have hoped for a better resolve, alas the pill bashing, money grubbing, bouncer smashing film came to a very bad ending. Fine good-looking believable cast and a great development of the relationships between characters, especially between Matt and Dylan who I enjoyed watching as a fun boyish pair. There was a lot of good music, pretty girls and heavy drugs which made for an exciting yet hardly novel adventure. I'm not sure if I recommend this film as it's finalle isn't really a finalle atall. It's like a really well built up tune that once fully ascended drops into nothing but a whistle and rolling credits.

First off, let me say that I'm absolutely shocked that this is rated only 4.8/10. This movie is bloody fantastic.I can guarantee that this will become a cult film in the future the same way Requiem for a Dream is today.While not without flaws, this movie has so much to offer someone looking for a good time. It starts out with the 2 main characters Dillon and Matt getting into the UK underground rave scene. They meet up with Captain Awesome and begin hosting their own raves. That's when the fun begins.There are so many twists and turns, and epic moments in the film that I won't spoil anything. Give this movie a chance and you may find that you really enjoyed it, a guilty pleasure with a great ending.

Weekender follows a couple of young guys in Manchester in 1990. The pair of them are petty thieves but soon realise that they can make some money if they begin organising their own raves. Everything starts out well but serious problems soon complicate things.Weekender is a likable snapshot of the early 90's when dance music as we now know it was just emerging from the underground. Many people started going along to raves and got loaded on ecstasy. While the movie follows the usual trajectory of ascent and descent, similar to films such as Human Traffic it doesn't have a 'drugs are bad' message. Instead the villains of the piece are local gangsters who turn up on the scene and start controlling things with force. Weekender does look back on those early 90's times with a certain amount of fondness and there is an effective soundtrack of house music to emphasise the sense of time. The music isn't the usual familiar array of well known dance anthems from the time; it goes for a more specific selection of tunes that ravers would have encountered back in the day.In fairness there isn't anything overly new in Weekender. Its story doesn't really offer up any surprises at all. However, it's a good little movie about an important time in British music history.(no pills were popped in the watching of this film)