No self-disrespecting finger-snapping swinger should be without the music to Clooney's clever directorial debut. Suave as the fella himself, it kicks off with a song written by the movie's hero, Chuck Barris—or at least he claims he wrote it. Of course, he claims a lot of things. His shining pop moment, "Palisades Park" by Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon, is as kitsch as the night is long.
Director Metin Hüseyin's breezy adaptation of Meera Syal's terrific fictionalised memoir about growing up Anglo-Asian in the West Midlands in the early '70s suffers a little from British film's TV smallness, feeling at times like an extended episode of Goodness Gracious Me. But the crisp script and immense charm of 14-year-old newcomer Chandeep Uppal as the sassy prepubescent heroine Meena bring Syal's rites-of-passage story to life.