FEATURE:
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
After Shoplifters of the World, Will There Be a Film That Properly Explores The Smiths’ Legacy and Importance?
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A week ago……
IN THIS PHOTO: Ellar Coltrane as Dean in Shoplifters of the World/PHOTO CREDIT: RLJE Films
there was a lot of negative chatter online regarding the trailer for a new film, Shoplifters of the World. It is not a biopic of The Smiths, yet it is loaded with their music and seems to be a sort of (if strange) coming-of-age story. Maybe that is the wrong tag, yet we get a soundtrack of songs by The Smiths without there being this engrossing story. The A.V. Club provided their impressions:
“Shoplifters Of The World seems intended as a love letter to The Smiths, but in trying to convey the British band’s importance, it comes across more like fan fiction—too reference-heavy for a general audience, too shallow for those already in the know. The catalyzing event for a tight-knit group of recent high school graduates is the Smiths’ 1987 breakup, which sends poor Cleo (Helena Howard of Madeline’s Madeline) into a performative funk. Not only is her friend group heading in different life directions, but her guiding musical light has been dimmed. She turns to shy record store clerk Dean (Boyhood star Ellar Coltrane), who’s nursing a crush on Cleo and allows her to shoplift all the cassettes she can pocket. (Strangely, it’s a lot of Smiths’ tapes, which presumably she’d already own.)
In a grand romantic gesture undercut with the threat of violence—those always work out well—Dean takes over a heavy metal radio station, holding DJ Full Metal Mickey (Magic Mike’s Joe Manganiello) at gunpoint and insisting that he play nothing but The Smiths all night long. This part of the story—very loosely based on an actual event—is supposed to provide the movie’s hook, but the resulting conflict is basically non-existent. There’s never the sense that this sweet, mopey kid presents any real danger, so the relationship heads where good stories go to die: sweet understanding and unearned growth. Dean and the DJ talk like old chums about divorce, vegetarianism, and music. Metal Mickey rapidly learns to appreciate The Smiths, even though he’s a diehard Metallica fan, and Dean learns that there might be some common ground between the music he worships and the music he despises. (Spoiler: It’s the New York Dolls.)
Meanwhile, the bulk of Shoplifters concerns itself with four other characters navigating that same night, and each is absolutely malnourished by the script. Patrick (James Bloor) won’t have sex with his jonesing-for-it girlfriend, Sheila (Elena Kampouris), claiming to be celibate like Smiths’ singer Morrissey, when in actuality he’s wrestling with his sexuality. Meanwhile, oddball Billy (Nick Krause) also holds a flame for Cleo, but finds sexual satisfaction in pink balloons. (He’s also about to join the military, and his very hetero dad couldn’t be more proud.) Each has a surface-level story, but none has much of a personality beyond “Smiths fan.” In order to explain that fandom, the movie turns to archival interviews with Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, sprinkling them liberally throughout as a complement to the Smiths-heavy soundtrack.
To further reinforce the band’s importance, Shoplifters Of The World crams Smiths’ lyrics into its characters’ mouths in nearly every scene, a choice that moves from distraction to annoyance pretty quickly—especially when the song quotes don’t exactly address the plot. When Cleo breaks down about her life in front of Billy and reveals that they tried to be a couple once but it didn’t work out, he says, “I would leap in front of a flying bullet for you.” The line makes great sense in the context of a great song—”What Difference Does It Make?”—but very little as a line of dialogue here. Smiths devotees might get a kick out of these quotes for a while. Everyone else will be left scratching their heads. The gimmick is so pervasive that it’d almost be a relief if one of the characters turned to camera and said, “Those are Smiths lyrics!” Perhaps it could even inspire a drinking game, though if you consumed a shot every time it happened, you’d be on the floor before the movie ended.
For years, Smiths fans retold the story that inspired Shoplifters Of The World as fact, but what actually happened is far more in keeping with the band’s outsider legacy than a bunch of attractive teens quoting lyrics and wrestling with post-adolescence. Denver alt-weekly Westword set the record straight a few years back, revealing that in reality, a depressed teen named James Kiss parked outside a radio station with a rifle, planning to force the staff to play his Smiths tapes over the air. But after seeing a station employee in the parking lot, he decided not to go through with it, later saying, “I didn’t want to hurt anybody, let alone scare anybody.” Those deeply invested in the music of The Smiths—which is still relevant and powerful nearly 40 years later, a fact undamaged by this movie—will recognize that story as more true to the band’s nuanced legacy: teenaged, clumsy, and shy, but also complicated and believable. Nothing in Shoplifters Of The World comes close to those latter qualities”.
Maybe it is best to avoid the film, but there are so many fans of The Smiths around the world that would love to see something in the way of a biopic. When it comes to portraying The Smiths on film, the only other example I can recalls is 2017’s England Is Mine. That was a British biographical drama film, based on the early years of singer Morrissey, before he formed The Smiths in 1982 with Johnny Marr. That got some mixed reviews (here is what The Guardian said), so I wonder whether there will be another attempt.
As the band formed in Manchester in 1982, it would seem like a perfect time to launch a film – bring it out next year to mark forty years of the iconic band. Their magnificent third studio album, The Queen Is Dead, turns thirty-five in June, so there will be new interest then. Although the band went their separate ways and there is very little chance of reformation, one cannot underplay the importance of The Smiths and the impact they made on so many people’s lives. There have been a lot of music biopics released through the years. The trend is showing no signs of decline. Maybe a biopic about The Smiths might not be in the pipeline, though I feel a film that has this coming-of-age vibe where we get a soundtrack of The Smiths’ music would be popular. Having a story that integrates the songs more naturally and impactfully and crafting a storyline that is compelling and a must-watch would be a step up from Shoplifters of the World. I feel the band deserve a lot of small and big screen love, so I do hope that there are plans for something else. Perhaps a film that picks up from England Is Mine and we get to see the band record their first few albums and the sort of impact they had on people at the time. I think that naming it Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loves Me would be fitting, as it is a favourite of both Johnny Marr and Morrissey - and, as it is on their final album, Strangeways, Here We Come (1987), there is a bittersweet tinge. I, like many fans of The Smiths, hope that we will see a worthy and satisfying Smiths-related film next year to mark forty years since…
THE hugely influential Manchester band formed.