KILLING BONO – The Review

This film has me torn between really liking it, and casting it aside…

KILLING BONO is the tale of two Irish in the 1980’s brothers struggling to make it in a rock band. Jealousy rears its ugly head when their friends band, U2, becomes a huge success while they are still struggling on the music scene. Semi truth, semi fictitious, the film follows Neil (Ben Barnes) and Ivan McCormick (Robert Sheehan) on their quest for rock stardom with their band Shook Up as Bono and U2 become more and more famous. The thought of this is unbearable to Neil, causing trouble for him, his brother, and his career.

Anyone old enough to remember the 80’s knows how big U2 were, and still are. They sell out stadiums around the world, and their frontman is known by one single name… Bono…

The film is based on the memoirs of Neil McCormick, and knowing a thing or two about music, this film could be true. That does not, however, automatically make this a good movie. The story was interesting, there were some fun rock-n-roll scenes, but I felt like most of the film just dragged on. It felt like more of a cry-fest about Bono and U2 than it did about Neil McCormick’s story. After watching videos of the original Shook Up, they vastly over-exaggerated their talent in the film.

The story of resentment and angst was a great way to go. I just really feel like they could have told it differently, and by that, I mean the screenplay could have been better. Instead of showing the jealousy in a fiery way, the character of Neil felt like a whiny, self absorbed wanker. U2 wasn’t taunting him, or messing up his life… he was messing up his own life and blaming (crying about) U2. It was pretty funny to see the many different styles of music and wardrobe that they tried on before basically copying U2’s style. The film claims to be a comedy, but there is a really uneven balance of drama mixed in that left me a bit neutral about the film.

Also, just throwing it out there… why would you pass up the opportunity, after years of struggling, to open up for U2. If your ego and jealousy are deep enough to turn down a big opportunity from a widely successful band, then you deserve to fail. Does the film show the character of Bono as a bit of an ass as a teenager? Sure, but most of us were. It didn’t really paint him in a bad light after that, so if they were trying to paint U2 in a negative light, or give us a reason for Neil to hate Bono, they failed.

There were some entertaining parts to the film. Not enough to save the movie, but enough to carry you through. The way they painted the music industry was rather funny. Drugged up guys that were completely full of shit seemed to rule the scene. Also, Robert Sheehan (who played Ivan) held my attention. I really enjoyed his part. Despite rather liking his character, I had no emotional ties between either of them. Their characters were underdeveloped for my taste.

This film is entertaining enough for a one-time view, but I’m still on the fence about KILLING BONO

KILLING BONO was released to Video On Demand October 5, 2011 and hits theaters November 4, 2011.

OVERALL RATING: 2.5 out of 5 stars