Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (Mat Whitecross, 2010)

Cantankerous English lyrical icon Ian Dury, who seamlessly bridged the gap between music hall and punk in the '70s and '80s, was what could only be a called a character as a profound understatement: he was larger than life in every sense, from his childhood-polio induced disability, displayed like a badge, to his raucous stage and private personae, laddish aggro married with learned verbiosity to produce a unique whole. There's enough material in his life story for several films.
Whitecross opts to focus on the peak years of his popularity, and the film alternates between the music and Dury's rages in his family life. This has a somewhat bipolar effect, which, perhaps only unintentionally, but effectively regardless, accentuates the schizophrenic aspects of Dury's character. The rock biopic does of course commonly follow this structural archetype: as with, say, the Johnny Cash story in Walk the Line, the songs are slotted in either as a counterpoint or as ironic commentary on what's going on in the dramatic scenes between them, which usually culminate in some form of cathartic event in the performer's life. Why Sex & Drugs is superior to most of the genre is simple: Dury is just a more complex subject matter than the average self-destructive rock star, and the casting of Andy Serkis in the role is immaculate. The vocal inflections, the mannerisms and charisma come across so perfectly that the acid test of forgetting that you're still only looking at an actor, and not the man himself, is passed within five minutes.

7/10