Note: This is the original film review, reposted for the DVD release:
One of the most amazing real-life reflections of the music business comes to the fore in the brand-new semi-autobiographical comedy drama SCHEMERS.
Based on the endeavours of David McLean’s series of ambitious gigs in and around Dundee during the 1980s, at a time of Thatchers and a mix of prosperity and uncertainty, the film begins as the young David (Conor Berry) is flattened during an amateur football match by a rival for a girl he is sleeping with, breaking his leg in the process and ending a potentially promising career on the pitch.
Despite a home life that is clearly heading the same way as the Titanic, David resolves to do better – and begins to try and make it in an alternate field of music promotion and presentation, starting with the local student university disco and then ambitiously hoping to land the services of some of the hot and upcoming bands at the time like Iron Maiden, Simple Minds, Ultravox and XTC.
One problem – he and his friends are skint. However, one of them is happily married and also seems to be saving up for a Florida holiday with his wife. Add to the challenges of the local gangland mobsters having a backhand in all the key venues where they want to showcase the bands they are booking – and you can predict that this is not going to be the chocolate box, put-on-a-show safe haven we would all love it to be….
With the feistiness of Danny Boyle’s TRAINSPOTTING, with the narration and freeze frames on key moments, coupled with the playfulness of Bill Forsyth’s classic Scottish 1980s offerings like COMFORT AND JOY, GREGORY’S GIRL and LOCAL HERO, SCHEMERS has a wonderfully energetic exuberance about it, with great performances from the young cast in a film that definitely celebrates the culture and potential of Dundee, with lovingly shot vistas of the locality, coupled with the wonderfully realised humour throughout the film, which was shot in and around the province using local talent – and is also the first ever feature-length film to have been done there.
SCHEMERS is a stimulating WHISTLE TEST of a whistle stop tour through a prosperous time in Dundee’s historical music scene. The joy in this film is not the endgame of the adventure, but the joy to be found in watching the perpetrators try and get to where they need to be – and sometimes that is the real pleasure in a film like this, which is certainly going to generate interest amongst music fans who are sorely missing that live buzz at the moment due to the pandemic in the UK and elsewhere.
Schemers will be available on DVD & Digital Download 25th January. Pre-order your digital copy here & DVD here
