So I got invited to a press screening of this new Vice documentary Rose Boy last week and there were free drinks (in the form of a special Rose Boy cocktail which was pretty cool) and the film actually sounded like it would be pretty good – it was about people being obsessed with celebrities so you know that it was going to be like one of those gross Sky One/Channel Four documentaries where everyone is just laughing at the subjects – so I headed down to Vice HQ check it out with Paulie Mapantsup.
And yeah it was really good and probably even exceeded my expectations. That girl who presents the Joy of Teen $ex made it and presented it along with the guy who made Dalston Superstars and she brought the same kind of interview style – knowing looks at the camera and asking questions that clearly were meant to be uncomfortable but somehow doing it in a way that didn’t piss off the interviewee – to it. This really worked when they were dealing with all these people who were obsessed with celebrities and whilst you did end up laughing at them a lot because they were so weird it didn’t really come across as condescending as it could have done. Kinda undecided if it would have been better if it had been more condescending though. Probably not.
In any case, Rose Boy follows a bunch of different celebrity obsessed people as they embark on various different quests to meet their heroes. The main character is Harvii who’s a 12 year old budding homosexual who bunks off school to run around London and get his picture taken with various celebrities at various hotels they are staying at. He shot to fame as Rose Boy when he got pictured trying to give Megan Fox a rose and she completely blanked him. I guess I missed that. You also get to meet this dude Danilo from Brazil who has moved to England specifically to try and meet all the Spice Girls but has only managed to meet Mel C so far. Scraping the barrel huh? But he did get a tattoo of her and manage to present a picture of it to her. Then there’s the dude who has a bunch of celebrities tattooed all over his body and the guy who has changed his appearance so he looks exactly like La Roux.
So yeah basically it’s a documentary about a bunch of weirdos but everyone loves those right? Although there is a fair degree of condescension like I siad before its still conducted with slightly more taste and class than you might expect and I don’t feel like Vice are laughing at some of these people as hard as they quite easily could. At the screening the filmmakers told us that none of the people they interviewed had dads and so they have all turned to celebrities as father figures in their lives which was pretty interesting, I’m just not sure why they didn’t bother to include it in the movie. But still, even without that the movie is enjoyable and comes highly recommended by Sick Chirpse. Check it out below (this is only part 1, I guess I might do another post when part 2 comes out but if not keep your eyes peeled):
