A film adaptation of the Greatest Days / The Band Musical featuring songs of Take That.
⭐️
Greatest Days is a musical that truly confused me when it was on stage as the official Take That Musical as I had seen The Band Musical which had Take That songs featured in it, I actually thought we had two different Take That musicals in the world but in fact it was just a name change. Anyway not long after the stage debut and changes we have this film adaptation, I actually decided to watch it to see if I could get away with it more than the stage show. Turns out that wasn’t the case and now I will try and explain why.
The story centres around nurse Rachel who is rather unhappy in her current life and when her favourite boyband announces a reunion tour she enters a radio competition to win tickets to see them and with flashbacks shown she has to invite her best friends from her teen years as they went to see them back in the day. Although they have not spoken for the past twenty years, and then just meet at the airport for the flight.
The thing is though the parts of music helping teens through difficult and tough times and that continuing when you become an adult is actually a pretty good idea. Music really can be the best thing to save you with those lyrics when you truly need it, but it also has the power to destroy you with memories.
Take That are not a band I have ever really been into, I was slightly too young for the mania that followed them around back in the 90s. Then in all honesty I’m just not a big fan of the songs and find the lyrics to be rather weak, placing them in a film like this actually highlights that they don’t have much about them at all.
The way it’s all done with Rachel talking to the boys and the band is all a bit strange and feels as though it is a little bit bizarre on screen. For a musical it doesn’t really have all that many big musical numbers that are full songs, more like small snapshots. I can understand what the film has tried to do and it attempts to be Mamma Mia style, but quite frankly it just doesn’t work.
It could really have delved into the fact that your best friends at school don’t often make it into your life as an adult and the most you might now know about them you find out and see on social media. Again though it just flirts on the edge of entering that as well, naturally a traumatic event did occur in the teen years but by that point you quite frankly aren’t engaged enough in the characters.
I guess this is aimed mainly at Take That fans? Although I even question myself for asking that question. Does anyone care to offer if and why they liked this film?
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