Stardust

To celebrate what would have David Bowie's 74th birthday and the recent fifth anniversary of his death, director Gabriel Range has released a biopic of the late, great music legend.

Stardust stars Johnny Flynn as Bowie and focuses on his tour of America in 1971. He hopes this trek will help him crack the States and turn him into a big star, but due to a visa mix-up, he's banned from playing concerts, so he has to tour the country in his publicist Ron Oberman (Marc Maron)'s car, hitting up radio stations to promote his new album, The Man Who Sold the World, and performing low-key gigs at trade conferences.

The film also delves into the relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry (Derek Moran), his marriage to first wife Angie (Jena Malone), and the origins of his Ziggy Stardust persona.

The main obstacle standing in the way of Stardust being a successful biopic is the fact that Bowie's estate didn't approve of the film or grant rights to the use of Bowie's music. So we have a film about Bowie that doesn't contain any of his hits! The film falls flat without it and the absence of his music is glaringly and painfully obvious.

Director Range got around this issue by having Flynn as Bowie sing covers that the man himself performed back in the '70s, but it feels wrong and unsatisfying watching these performances as you'd rather see him rock out to Space Oddity, for example. Watching a room of vacuum cleaner salespeople ignore his performance doesn't have the same impact with a cover instead of a classic, and for the same reason, the big finale number isn't as crowd-pleasing as it should have been.

Flynn may not resemble Bowie but he comes very close to sounding like the real deal and his costumes and look were excellent. Bowie's public persona was larger than life so Flynn could have turned his performance into a caricature but he kept it as grounded as possible and gave him a real sense of humanity, particularly in relation to his brother's illness.

Maron was perfectly cast as the ageing, exasperated publicist who is fed up of driving wannabes around the country, while Malone does well as Angie, even though she isn't given an awful lot to do.

Stardust doesn't completely work as a biopic because it's too thin and flimsy and jumps around a bit too much, and it fails to make up for the fact Bowie's music is missing. Sadly this isn’t the celebration of his legacy we hoped for.
Stardust will be released on digital platforms from 15th January.