The music of Take That is the soundtrack to this simple story of friendship formed and broken. It’s most effective in its flashback scenes, in which a group of five teenage girls bond over their shared obsession with fictional boyband 'The Boys'. It really captures the way music can become a framework for your identity, a way to make sense of complicated and confusing feelings. It’s energetic and giggly with an undertide of fear. The best number in the whole film is Rachel (Lara McDonnell) trying to ignore the roar of her parents’ arguments by imagining The Boys performing ‘Pray’ around her.
It's in the adult scenes where it falls flat, because those teenage emotions don’t evolve. A tragic event shatters the friendship, but four of them reunite after 25 years when Rachel (now Aisling Bea) wins a trip to Greece to The Boys’ reunion tour and sees a chance to heal old wounds. The reason one of them is missing is obvious, but director Coky Giedroyc and writer Tim Firth oddly leave it unacknowledged, trying to play it as a late-reveal mystery. That makes for a structural and tonal mess. Instead of the holiday being a cathartic celebration of life, it’s simmering with unspoken resentments, while also trying to somehow be a carefree pop party. It’s very peculiar to have characters gaily sloshing around a fountain to ‘Greatest Day’ while apparently feeling broken by loss and betrayal.
The film can’t find its rhythm; there are clever numbers, like a ‘Back For Good’ that has the adults simply singing to their lost youth, but some feel tacked on and cheaply staged – a budget Busby Berkeley ‘Let It Shine’ makes no narrative sense. It’s tonally all over the place, but does at least finish on a high, with a big shouty ‘Never Forget’. But you probably will forget quite quickly, regardless.