Review: Sounds Like Teen Spirit

When I started watching this film I thought the Junior Eurovision Song Contest looked kind of creepy with all the children made up to look like dolls almost like one of those horrible American beauty pageants. But Jamie Jay Johnson's film rises above that and explores four acts who are incredibly likeable. The Belgian band Trust have a slightly geeky lead female singer who just wants a cute boyfriend while the lanky boys in the band just want to learn how to dance. The Georgian girl really hopes to make her mother proud and put her country on the map. Marina from the Bulgarian group BonBon has become disenchanted with the idea of love following her parents divorce and the Cypriot boy wants to rise above the taunts that he recieves at school and put on a good show.

Where Smells Like Teen Spirit is at its best is in the candid interviews with the contestants a likeable bunch of geeks, dreamers and realists. This film was always going to be compared to Spellbound the American film about the Spelling Bees but this is different in its depiction of various European nations. There are some classic moments but none so entertaining as when the Georgian priest reveals his love of Heavy Metal music. Johnson's film is less succesful when trying to add a little bit of European history and explaining all the European conflicts that have effected the four acts we are following. This seems to be a completely different story however the main message seems to be make catchy pop-rock music not war. And if nothing else it has shown us that playing the accordian can be cool and that's got to be a good thing.