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Derek Malcolm's rating
Sounds Like Teen Spirit is a pleasure to watch
By
Derek Malcolm
7 May 2009
Jamie Jay Johnson’s debut documentary feature should be awful but it isn’t. In fact, it’s often highly enjoyable as he follows the 17 finalists, aged 10 to 15, of the fifth Junior Eurovision Song contest in Rotterdam. Those who don’t believe such a contest exists will be instantly disabused — and if the film will hardly have them wetting themselves, as the Dutch master of ceremony suggests, at least it avoids either fawning over or patronising the oddball contestants.
The fact is that a good number of the young participants, from poor families in countries such as Belarus and Georgia, desperately need a bit of success. Of course, their singing is not very good but Johnson manages to make you feel for them.
Aesthetically, it may be an awful event but Sounds Like Teen Spirit takes that in and still makes you watch it with pleasure — and a little pain too.
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