Glaswegian entrepreneur Alan McGee certainly chose life, didn’t he? His rambunctious and surreal success story is brought to the screen by writers Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh in director Nick Moran’s biopic Creation Stories, which fittingly debuted at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival.
McGee (played here by Ewen Bremner rocking some questionable wigs) was at the forefront of the music industry with his record label Creation Records; after getting his break managing The Jesus and Mary Chain, McGee became a coveted producer who went on to launch the careers of bands the likes of Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine and, most notably, Oasis. But it wasn’t an easy path to glory as he details to journalist Jemma (Suki Waterhouse) – their interviews over the years frame the narrative – and McGee’s success was often in a precarious state due to his fluctuating financial situation and serious drug addiction.
Co-scripted by Welsh (usually it’s his source material up for dissection) and starring Bremner, Creation Stories is a quintessentially Scottish piece of work. Everything about it. Of course, Creation Stories is based on a true story – a crazy one at that – but it struggles to find any fun or innovative way to put a fresh spin on things. It also tries to cram three decades worth of life into about ninety minutes of film.
Moran’s pulpy direction imbues Creation Stories with the frenetic energy you’d imagine McGee lived his life with; it’s certainly not a boring film, by any means. However, it ends up being more of a whistle-stop tour through key moments in McGee’s fascinating life rather than any meaningful meditation on the legacy he created with Creation Records. There’s no time to let any of the scenes linger which means thinly-sketched characters and no emotional payoff are in abundance throughout the narrative. While the whiplash pace adds to the hallucinatory sequences, it offers little else other than a sore head. But the most jarring moment of all comes when the film cuts to Leo Flanagan playing a young McGee to Bremner a few years later and tries to convince us they’re the same person.
Bremner admittedly gives a watchable performance as the beloved producing legend. While it is reminiscent of his turn as Spud in the aforementioned Trainspotting films, one can’t argue that he has the role down to a tee. Waterhouse, despite her minimal screen-time, is also an interesting presence in the eclectic cast that tries to do what she can in her scenes – although she’s mostly wasted by a script that brings her character into the fold as an exposition mouth-piece. Irvine Welsh; Ewen Bremner; Alan McGee; Oasis. It has all the ingredients to work and a small handful of compelling scenes and a brilliant score (thanks Oasis) do shine through the chaos. But the issue with Creation Stories is that there isn’t any method to the madness so the result is a smorgasbord of narrative threads and ideas that don’t really come together to make a very cohesive, let alone entertaining, whole.
Creation Stories
Summary
A crazy true story paced with frenetic energy with compelling scenes and a brilliant score that shine through that chaos.
Creation Stories plays the 2021 Glasgow Film Festival.
