You Just Haven’t Earned it Yet Baby
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By freddyvonfred
There is a scene early on in the film Shoplifters of the World that happens so quickly you may not notice it. As the camera pans around a restaurant, someone holds up a copy of the book entitled James Dean is Not Dead. To many watching this film that moment may be fleeting and inconsequential, but diehard Smiths (and Dean) fans will recognize this book as written by Stephen Morrissey as a love letter to his idol when he was quite young. Years after the author became simply known as Morrissey, and he seemed genuinely embarrassed by it, calling it in interviews a “pamphlet, really”. He is not wrong. The book is a rambling mess as told through the unobjective lens of a fawning superfan. One wonders is Stephen Kijak, the director of Shoplifters of the World will look back on this film with the same reflection.
Millennials and Gen Z will likely forgive or perhaps not even recognize the film’s many flaws and just focus on the music and 80’s references. But fellow Gen Xers who lived through the magical early Smiths era are likely to grow bored with the lack of story and inauthenticity including some truly cringe-worthy moments. There are a few bright spots. Breakout star Helena Howard as Cleo wants to shine, but unfortunately her dialogue is so forced and vapid (constant and annoying song lyric references aside) it’s hard for her to grab hold of the material fully. She calls out the posers who don’t understand the band yet her best friend Sheila dresses like a Madonna wannabe who in 1987 was already a superstar, and whose legions of mainstream fans rarely, if ever, crossed into the artsy misfit crowd who favored bands like the Smiths. The only reason the character seems to exist is for the many slow-mo shots of her leaning on Cleo and laughing. And the moment when she gets to literally take a bow to “her” song. Obviously Kijak is a Madonna fan too, and chose Sheila’s style just to blow Madge a kiss. But the creative choice here blurs the line and turns what could be great content into b reel promotional footage whose time could have been better spent developing his characters.
In another annoying technique, unnecessary clips of Smiths interviews from their early years are injected into the story as though to remind us why the band was so great. Kijak who apparently has more experience in music documentaries than crafting a feature film, seems unaware of his intentions. Is this a documentary? A fictional story? Fan fiction? It’s like eating a bad meal with Smiths songs on shuffle then having a fitful sleep in an alternate Smiths universe. Are the bicycle riders real or imaginary? Perhaps we to be hypnotized by the many, many shots of a spinning record playing into walking the line between belief and disbelief. Going for breadth and not depth with his character development, it’s impossible to dig deeper into what we are meant to feel for these people, if anything. They are not particularly like-able as they work their way through an American Graffiti influenced evening. A thin storyline meant as a vehicle to just play great music.
Perhaps if the filmmaker chose a town other than Denver which, though remote, is hardly the alienating culture of working class Manchester, or the speck of Fairmount Indiana where James Dean was raised. There are some interesting exchanges between Dean and the DJ who find common ground over the course of playing the Smiths catalog, again the “Deja Vu” moment of Wolfman Jack playing that same role for a young Richard Dreyfus in American Graffiti. But I had to ask myself, were there no college radio stations playing the Smiths in Denver in the 80’s? Dean (Ellar Coltrane’s character in the film, not the movie actor though the name choice is another groaner) at least is able to give some context to his love for the band, sharing how the John Peel sessions saved him from suicide.
By 1987 the Smiths were already on the way out with their last (and least interesting) album, Strageways Here We Come. If the film was not centered on the premise of the band breaking up, if the characters were still in high school, in the early 80’s working at wherever it was when they first met, when the band was also in it’s heyday, this film would have felt fresher and far more interesting.
It cannot be underscored too heavily how indie culture formed in the 80s. There was no social media or even the internet. Only a few families had cable early on, which meant access to MTV. The only way you connected with fellow fans was in the indie record store, a thrift store, your high school art, music or theater class, in a club or at a concert. This is one of the few things the film gets right.
The Smiths, when they first appeared, defied the toxic masculinity pervasive in rock, giving a voice to the underdog. Unfortunately, the story here, stuck together with paste and bubble gum, doesn’t do justice to the specialness of this moment in time, or the songs that made you cry...or the ones that saved your life.
