Tearing up the screen: BFI’s Rip It Up season rebels against tired teen stereotypes

Young people have chosen this six-month season, and though rebel classics such as Quadrophenia and If … are here, the picks show youth culture in flux Seventy-five years ago, the Festival of Britain offered a vision of a modern, forward-looking nation emerging from the austerity of the second world war. It also coincided with the emergence of a new cultural figure in the US: the teenager. For the first time, young people were beginning to be recognised as a distinct social group with their own tastes, fashions, anxieties and aspirations. That evolution forms the basis of Rip It Up, a new nationwide season from the BFI Film Audience Network running from May to October, exploring how British film and television have captured youth culture across seven decades. Bringing together screenings, archive material, talks, live events and youth-led programming, the season traces a journey from postwar rebellion and working-class aspiration to contemporary questions of identity, belonging and self...

The Problem with People review – old-country lark takes on blarney-fuelled family feud

Paul Reiser and Colm Meaney go into cliche mode when an Irish patriarch wills half his legacy to his son’s unknown American cousin

Never mind people. The problem with this comedy is the cliches. It could not be more Irish if it was dropped into a pint of Guinness and rolled in shamrocks by a dancing leprechaun. The script is co-written by the American actor Paul Reiser, with a very broad sense of humour, though it’s likable enough. Colm Meaney is also on decent form as undertaker Ciáran, whose elderly father Fergus (Des Keogh) has a deathbed request: he wants to heal a rift with the American side of the family that has rumbled on for a couple of generations.

Over in New York, Reiser plays American cousin Barry, a real-estate tycoon. He’s recovering from the double whammy of a heart attack and divorce, which puts him in the sentimental mood for a family reunion. So off he flies, back to the old country. Initially, Barry is charmed by the beauty of the landscape and the quirky locals – among them a B&B owner with Mrs Doyle levels of pushiness and a pair of teenagers constantly putting on terrible American accents. The poor actors seem to have been directed to play it full-on, with exaggerated facial expressions and slightly embarrassing oversize performances.

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