Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 18/10/2012)

Yet, when she comes to making her most personal picture to date, Potter has embraced cinematic narrative convention so whole-heartedly that it is difficult to distinguish Ginger & Rosa from such early 1980s rite-of-passage teleplays as Michael Apted's P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang and Philip Savile's Those Glory Glory Days, which respectively explored aspects of the young lives of writers Jack Rosenthal and Julie Welch in 1948 and during the 1960-61 football season when Tottenham Hotspur won the league and cup double. In each case, Apted and Savile used location and period detail to root their droll dramas in a specific time and place, as did Lone Scherfig in her adaptation of Lynn Barber's 1960s memoir, An Education (2009). But Potter struggles to evoke the London of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and, consequently, fails to provide a convincing social, political and cultural context for what is, essentially, a disappointingly formulaic domestic melodrama.

Inseparable friends Christina Hendricks and Jodhi May give birth to daughters on the day that America drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Around a decade later, May is abandoned by her husband and left to raise Alice Englert and her younger siblings in a maisonette estate, while, across the capital, Hendricks struggles to play happy families with Elle Fanning and her college tutor father, Alessandro Nivola. Considering how close they once were, May and Hendricks no longer seem to be in each other's pockets. But their girls have followed their lead in doing everything together and, as they hit 17, Englert starts whisking Fanning away from school to teach her how to smoke, wear grown-up clothes, ride in cars with boys at the beach and get home tipsy in the wee small hours of the morning.

The conservative Hendricks heartily disapproves of such behaviour. But Nivola is proud his daughter's rebellious streak and also clearly approves of the way in which Englert has matured, as he drives her home in his open-topped car through a brightly lit tunnel that gives way to the neon-flecked darkness of a lower-end inner-city suburb. Moreover, the fatherless Englert is touched by Nivola's solicitude and writes a letter empathising with both the pain he has endured since being jailed as a conscientious objector during the war and the desire to live a more bohemian lifestyle away from the stifling norms of everyday society.

Thus, when Nivola invites Fanning and Englert for a weekend sailing trip on his boat, he uses the opportunity to flirt with his daughter's impressionable friend and Fanning starts to feel a nagging resentment at the fact the two people she most admires are squeezing her out as they grow closer. This sense of impotence similarly overcomes her when Nivola picks a fight with Hendricks over her desire to have her cooking complimented and the sacrifice she made in becoming a home-maker instead of a painter acknowledged by a man who has done exactly what he likes since getting her pregnant as a teenager.

Exploiting the row to justify his decamping to a flat in a rundown neighbourhood, Nivola allows Fanning to move into the spare attic room and she celebrates her new independence by tucking her teddy bears into her bed and turning up the volume on the jazz record she seems to prefer to the rock and pop that would surely have been enticing kids of her age in the autumn that saw the release of The Beatles's first single. However, Fanning seems to take most of her cues from the people around her and, having heard about the growing threat of nuclear war on the radio while brushing her teeth, she follows the example of homosexual godfathers Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt and their feminist friend Annette Bening in joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and dragging Englert to meetings chaired by duffle-coat-wearing bearded activist Andrew Hawley (in the same manner that Englert had insisted that they pray in a church and wear rosaries around their necks as a kind of Christian lucky charm).

Despite claiming to despise Hendricks, Fanning had felt sorry for her when she heard her playing sad songs on her accordion in the middle of the night and had made her a consoling cup of tea. Yet she continues to idolise Nivola, even after the noise of him seducing Englert in another part of the boat cabin had reduced her to tears and the sight of them canoodling as he types one of his philosophical tracts at the kitchen table fills her with confused revulsion. However, when Englert breaks the news that she thinks she might be pregnant, Fanning finally loses control and gets herself arrested at a CND sit-in and refuses to co-operate with either the police or the psychiatrist who informs Spall, Platt and Bening when they come to bail her out that he thinks her need to protest is a sign of psychosis.

The inevitable showdown that takes place amidst the tumbling revelations in Hendricks's front parlour would not be out of place in a soap opera and it is this casual attitude to telling her tale that sets this apart from all previous Potter pictures. Maybe she was too close to the characters, incidents and ideas to tackle them with sufficient perspective. Or, perhaps the erstwhile avant-gardist found the task of making the action as accessible as possible trickier than she had anticipated. Whatever the reasons, this turns out to be an earnest, but wholly unconvincing saga that suffers from having too many non-Brits in key roles and from lacking either the budget or the desire to make the physical and psychological milieu seem more authentic.

Thirteen year-old Elle Fanning tries hard to convey the angst and guilelessness of a young woman four years her senior with a penchant for scribbling lines of intense, but inexpert poetry at times of crisis. Alice Englert (who is director Jane Campion's daughter) seems more attuned to the romantic notions of a character caught somewhere between beatnik and hippie. But she drifts out of the story in the second half and becomes as inadequately delineated as the ciphers played by Hendricks, Spall, Platt and Bening, whose slogan-spouting American radical seems to come from nowhere.

With Carlos Conti's production design and Lucy Donowho's costumes smacking of self-conscious accuracy, it's left to cinematographer Robbie Ryan and editor Anders Refn to inject a little nouvelle vague energy into visuals that wobble and jump-cut with laudable proficiency. But even these effects feel as calculated as the inclusion on the soundtrack of tunes by Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus that suggest a greater concentration on the fumbling hipness of the period than its perilous politics and the hypocritical chasm that exists between Nivola's pontificating intellectualism and his own personal morality.

For all its artistic pretensions, Ginger & Rosa is no more credible than John Stockwell's Dark Tide, a shark attack flick that has much more in common with the director's previous aquatic outings Blue Crush (2002) and Into the Blue (2005) than Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Cinematographer Jean-François Hensgens largely succeeds in making the seas off Cape Town seem both spectacular and intimidating. But the screenplay by Amy Sorlie and Ronnie Christensen is so stuffed with clichés and caricatures that not even performers as capable as Halle Berry, Olivier Martinez and Ralph Brown can salvage it.

Having earned a reputation as a `shark whisperer', American free diver Halle Berry takes a break from running tourist boat trips to shoot a documentary with French husband Olivier Martinez. They fool around on the deck with mechanic Mark Elderkin and support diver Sizwe Msufu, who is on his last expedition before retiring to spend more time with his wife, Thoko Ntshinga. However, while Berry is frolicking with a friendly female shark, they incur the wrath of a ravenous male and Msufu is killed in an frenzied attack that leaves the water stained red as Elderkin hauls Berry and Martinez back on board.

A year later, Berry and Martinez have parted company and bookings have tailed off since Berry stopped letting patrons down in cages to swim with the sharks. Instead, she and Elderkin take trippers to nearby Seal Island and hope to spot the odd dolphin or whale to enliven proceedings for parties who can't afford to go with her flashier competitors. When the bank threatens to take Berry's boat after she defaults on a loan, Ntshinga encourages her to give Martinez a call, as she knows she still loves him. However, no sooner has she renewed contact than he suggests she accepts a €100,000 offer from brash British businessman Ralph Brown, who wants to show off to estranged teenage son Luke Tyler by swimming with sharks without the protection of a cage.

Needing the money, Berry agrees to take them out, but reserves the right to judge whether it is safe to dispense with the cage. However, she becomes so wound up by Brown goading Tyler about being a wimp that when he slips out of the cage and has to be rescued, she loses her temper and sets sail for Shark Alley to show Brown some creatures that will test his courage. Typically, the voyage is stricken with calamities, as a storm brews up, the anchor slips and the boat capsizes as a particularly ferocious Great White sets its sights on the stranded crew.

Underwater movies always run the risk of detaching the audience from the action, as it is often difficult to gauge character reactions when they are clad from head to toe in a wetsuit and only have their eyes are visible through goggles. However, by setting the climax to this lacklustre adventure at night, Stockwell makes it nigh on impossible to discern who is who and how much peril they are in from the circling predator. Mike Valentine's subterranean camerawork is fine, but things are less clear on the surface as survivors cling to the upturned hull and wait for Berry to locate the liferaft.

The real problem here, however, is the script, which gives Brown the odd stinging line, but leaves Berry and Martinez with little to do but engage in endless bouts of bickering and making up that makes it all the more amusing that the ended up an item at the end of the shoot (indeed, they are now engaged). Thus, while it offers the occasional jolt, this shark opera is as tame as Jane Russell's scantily-clad voyage to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea in John Sturges's Underwater! (1955).

Wildlife fans might enjoy the shots of the fur seals and African penguins consorting on the Cape beach, but they will learn a great deal more about their interaction in The King Penguin 3D, which has been scripted and narrated by the peerless David Attenborough for producers Anthony Geffen and Slas Wilson. This review is based on the flat version and one suspects the stereoscopic views will be even more striking. However, as there are moments here in which the seeming cruelty of Nature takes a hand, this is not a film for very young children and even tweenagers may find a couple of scenes distressing.

The scene opens on the Antarctic island of South Georgia, as Sir David introduces us to the various albatrosses, skuas and giant petrels circling the skies, the killer whales and leopard seals plunging the depths and the fur and elephant seals basking on the beach, just as our hero and his two cousins return from the three-year journey that has seen them mature from one-year chicks to fully fledged males. Unfortunately, no explanation is given for this rite-of-passage adventure or where it has taken our penuin and his kinsmen. But what matters is the here and now as the trio waddle through the dunes to Penguin City (Population: six million), where every male and female seems to be courting, protecting eggs or guarding brown downy babies who are too young to fend for themselves.

Our king spots a likely mate and starts making his moves. But she is less than impressed when he starts moulting and has to endure a fortnight of flapping and scratching before he has grown a new set of waterproof feathers. Once again looking resplendent, the male goes fishing to fatten himself up and cut a suitable dash in front of his lady friend. He performs the time-honoured bowing ritual and stretches his neck to catch her eye and is rewarded with an affectionate nuzzle that lets him know they have become an item. The swaggering walk he employs as he searches for a suitable spot for them to consummate the union is hilariously laddish. But there is touching gentleness about their moment of intimacy and Attenborough informs us that it seals a bond that will never be broken no matter how far apart the events of the next year are going to drive them.

Following a celebratory romp in the surf with their friends, the new couple turn their attention to the egg that is laid 12 days after their union. As his partner goes in search of fish to sustain him, the king settles down for a 55-day incubation period and is glad to have one of his cousins for company, as he stands tall through frozen nights and crisp, bright days to keep the egg warm in his brood pouch. A greedy pair of skuas stalk the encampment and lure one expectant father into making a defensive sortie that leaves his egg exposed to attack. But our penguin is luckier, as although he allows his egg to roll away from him, he is able to resume his nesting position before his mate returns with the full belly she will need to feed their chick.

Stumbling over its father's feet as it hatches, the youngster scuttles across to its mother and almost immediately begins demanding food, which she regurgitates for him and presents in her mouth. Unsurprisingly, dad finds this miracle a little unappetising and heads into the sea to catch up on his own feasting, leaving his poor cousin comes to terms with the fact that, in his eagerness to become a dad, he had been sitting for the last two months on a white stone.

Fortunate to escape the attentions of a leopard seal, the new father and his cousins go in pursuit of lantern fish and are still feeling frisky when they encounter a couple of humourless orcas and have to strike out to the nearest land in order to escape. Realising they are quite some way from Penguin City, the threesome pick their way gingerly through 20 flatulent elephant seals and our hero is clearly moved by hearing the welcoming call of his mate and their progeny. He now takes over the feeding, while the brooding cousin goes in search of any orphaned chicks who might need his aid. But, once again, he manages to misjudge the situation and finds himself being chased away by possessive parents.

As winter descends, the chick requires more food to build up the layer of fat it will need to withstand the cold. Consequently, both mum and dad have to devote their time to fishing and the little one huddles together with its peers in a penguin creche that is protected by bachelor males. Having just returned from an odyssey that saw them meet up with a colony of tufted Macaroni penguins on a neighbouring island, the cousins are more than ready to do their bit, especially when some ruthless petrels start prowling for prey. As luck would have it, our king return just as the birds are planning an attack and the cousins rally their friends in driving them away to the shoreline, where they get additional grief from angry fur seals, keen to keep them away from their pups.

The family's fortune has run out, however, as mother fails to evade an orca as she dashes for the coast and father and son have to spend a bitter winter alone. The shots of the King penguins being buffered by the snow flurries and icy blasts chill the marrow. But the thaw eventually comes and junior starts to shed his fluff and grow his own sleek black-and-white coat (albeit without the flashes of yellow on the beak and breast that make his father look so distinguished)  And, as dad looks on proudly, he ventures into the water for the first time and our hero (perhaps thinking about his lost soulmate) knows he has done a good job in raising his boy.

A caption on the fade-out reveals that several penguins were used at various stages of their development to fashion this story. Such a disclosure is as inevitable as it is understandable, as it would be almost impossible to keep tabs on a single family unit over such a prolonged period. But there is no question that the statement somewhat spoils the illusion that has been so brilliantly sustained on land by Simon Niblett and under water by Hugh Miller. In truth, this feels like a rather gimmicky project for David Attenborough to be involved with. But his empathy, enthusiasm and expertise come across loud and clear in a commentary that provides a more than apt accompaniment to both the wildlife scenes and the breathtaking views of a wilderness a mere 100 miles long and some 900 miles from the South Pole.

By contrast, there is nothing cobbled about the footage captured by Emad Burnat for 5 Broken Cameras, as he participated in the battle between autumn 2005 and spring 2010 to save the Palestinian village of Bil'in from encroaching settlers. Situated 12km west of Ramallah, the settlement was seized by Israeli forces during the Six Day War in 1967 and the indigenous population endured occupation until 1995 when it came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian National Authority. However, the Israeli settlement of Modi'in Illit kept expanding on the other side of the West Bank Wall that cuts into Palestinian territory and, when bulldozers arrived in 2005 to start removing the olive trees on which his livelihood depended, farm labourer Burnat began recording the destruction.

His camera was smashed during the ensuing chaos. But, resisting his wife Soraya's pleas to desist, he kept filming the peaceful protests of his neighbours and saw four more cameras damaged in the process. Salvaged from 500 hours of material by Israeli Guy Davidi (who is credited as co-director) and French editor Véronique Lagoarde-Ségot, this is a remarkable testament that shows ordinary men, women and children resisting bullets, grenades, raids and provocation with dignity, determination and good humour. But there is also more than a grain of truth in the accusations of manipulative sentimentality that have been levelled against the resulting feature and, while it is undoubtedly heartfelt, there is something calculating about the scene in which the redoubtable Burnat's five year-old son Gibreel asks why the Israeli Defence Force has just killed a well-respected member of their community.

All four of Emad and his Brazilian-raised wife Soraya Burnat's sons were born at crucial times for the Palestinian cause. Mohammed arrived amidst the hope generated by the 1995 Oslo Accords, but this had faded by the time Yasim arrived three years later. Indeed, Taky-Adin came into the world on the very day the 2000 Intifada was declared and no sooner had Emad captured the birth of Gibreel with his new camera than the bulldozers came to Bil'in.

Recording the peaceful demonstrations that quickly become a part of village life each Friday after prayers, the camera only just made it into the new year, as it is damaged during the gas grenade attack that injures Emad's hand and he has to borrow a new one from his friend Yisrael Puterman. Among the first images caught with the new equipment was Adeeb Abu-Rahma being shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers. Something of an exhibitionist, Adeeb loves to taunt the interlopers, but he is nowhere near as popular with his neighbours as siblings Asraf (aka Daba) and Bassem, who is known a Phil (from the word for `elephant' because he is such a gentle giant.

Gibreel takes a particular shine to Phil and they often spend time together. But children are legitimate targets for the IDF and several are arrested during a night raid after being seen chanting `we want to sleep' near the barrier that the settlers had erected shortly after appropriating Palestinian land simply by erecting cabins upon it. The arrogance with which the Israelis taunt Emad as he tries to film them is reprehensible, but it should not be forgotten that the villagers counted several Jews amongst their supporters and that some of the funding for the documentary came from the national government.

However, it is during this scuffle with the settlers that Emad's second camera is destroyed and he ordered shortly afterwards to cease filming in public spaces and even within his own home as it is now part of a Closed Military Zone and he is violating the law by even residing there. Emad is charged with throwing rocks at an IDF patrol and is jailed, only to be released into house arrest before the case is eventually dropped because the crucial evidence against him has been lost by prosecuting forces.

Ignoring Soraya's pleadings to stop filming because it is placing himself and his family in danger, Emad goes on a holy day protest and is spared death only by the fact that a bullet lodges in the camera he was holding. Having already been twice repaired, this one is declared broken in the winter of 2007, by which time several of the surrounding villages have adopted Bil'in's method of civil disobedience. Thus, when a protester is killed in nearby Nil'in, Emad and his friends attend the funeral as a mark of respect, only for Daba to be arrested and deliberately shot in the leg by the occupants of an IDF truck.

An 11 year-old boy is gunned down by a sniper soon afterwards and a 17 year-old perishes at his funeral. Non-violent protest seems an impossible message to preach in the face of such provocation and disregard for human life. But the Palestinians refuse to resort to retaliatory aggression and are rewarded with an Israeli court verdict that the barrier erected by the settlers is illegals. Yet, despite wild celebrations, no effort is made to dismantle the wall over the ensuing months and Emad smashes his fourth camera when he steers his truck directly into it in late 2008. He is lucky to survive the accident and appreciates after coming round from a 20-day coma that he owes his life to the medics treating him at a Tel Aviv hospital. Moreover, he is also acutely aware of the irony that he is not entitled to compensation from the Palestinain Authority for no longer being able to work because he didn't sustain his injury in the service of the resistance.

With Israeli forces active in Gaza from late 2008, politicians seek to exploit the situation in Bil'in for their own ends and a new batch of settlers are presented with the keys to their homes. Yet Phil remains optimistic that a solution can be found, as he watches the 2010 World Cup at the outpost the villagers created close to the perimeter fence. However, he is fatally hit in the chest with a gas grenade while pleading through the wire with the IDF to give peace a chance and, when Adeeb is arrested for screaming accusations at the soldiers, Gibreel cannot understand why Emad doesn't take bloody revenge with his knife for the death of his beloved friend.

The demonstrations against the continued presence of the barrier intensify after Phil's death and Soraya loses patience with Emad for putting his liberty at risk once more. Yet parents Muhammad and Intisar are proud of the fact that each of their sons has been in trouble with the IDF: Eyad for denouncing the burning of olive trees; Riyad for complaining about Eyad's arrest; Khaled for resisting the IDF; and Jafar for protesting at the shooting of a neighbour. Consequently, Emad is on the frontline again when his fifth camera is shattered by a bullet in spring 2010 and he feels entirely justified in his actions when the wall finally comes down around the time of Gibreel's fifth birthday.

Typically, an even larger structure rises closer to Modi'in Illit and, while some of the confiscated land has been restoted by the time Emad takes Taky-Adin and Gibreel on their first visit to the seaside, the bitterness remains and the sense that Emad and his comrades have only won a Pyrrhic victory is confirmed by the closing caption that a sixth camera was wrecked in the spring of 2010, when Emad was hit by a stun grenade while filming the last day of demolishing the barrier.

Narrated by Emad to the plangent accompaniment of a score composed and played by Le Trio Joubran, this stands as one of the most important accounts of passive resistance ever captured on camera. An entirely different story might lurk in the discarded footage, but there is no reason to question the integrity of Emad and Davidi in seeking to show how differently Israelis and Palestinians approached this struggle. Of course, there are numerous shots of innocent children looking plaintively into the lens. But actuality cameras have stressed the suffering of the most vulnerable since the Great War and it is worth noting that the only suggestion of violent reprisal by any Palestinian comes from the wide-eyed Gibreel (whose first words included `wall', `cartridge' and `army') after Phil's tragic demise.

The rough-and-ready nature of Emad's imagery greatly enhances its immediacy and power and it is very much to Davidi and Lagoarde-Ségot's credit that no attempt has been made to give it undue polish in the edit. A little more reference to the wider political context might not have gone amiss. But the pair have done well to retain much of the wit exhibited by Emad and his fellow villagers in the face of incessant harassment. As a result, this comes across as a compelling human interest story, as well as a sobering indictment of how a democratic  21st-century state treats some of its own citizens.

Finally, this week come two music documentaries about bands linked by the song `Roadhouse Blues'. Written by Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore, it was released on the flipside of the 1969 single, `You Make Me Real'. Consequently, it doesn't feature on the playlist of The Doors - Live at the Hollywood Bowl `68, which has been reissued in cinemas prior to heading for DVD, which will also be the destination after 29 October of Alan G. Parker's magnificent chronicle Hello Quo!, which explains how Francis Rossi's discovery of an obscure B-side transformed Status Quo from a psychedelic combo to the finest exponents of rocking 12-bar blues in music history.

Perhaps the most striking thing about The Doors - Live at the Hollywood Bowl ’68 is the bareness of the stage and the almost funereal lack of atmosphere. It doesn't help that Ray Manzarek thought more as a performer than a director in limiting the number of cameras allowed up close and personal and then in cutting so frequently to a long shot taken from the back of the arena that makes the band members look insignificant against a small bank of speakers and amplifiers and a bland curtained backdrop. But the absence of lighting effects and giant video screens not only roots this firmly in a period when live rock music was still in its infancy, but also shows how much closer Doors gigs were to beatnik happenings than musical spectaculars.

Jim Morrison was 24 when he sidled out from the wings on 5 July 1968. From the outset, he seems subdued, although it is never certain whether he is nervous about performing in front of the cameras, is overawed at playing in such a celebrated venue or is simply labouring under the influence of some mind-relaxing chemicals. The latter certainly seems a distinct possibility, as he belches and grins mischievously during the opening rendition of `When the Music's Over', which is greeted with a surprising amount of barracking during the segment about hearing gentle sounds `with out head to the ground'.

He bucks up considerably for Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's `Alabama Song', although he largely sings it with his eyes closed and his hands cupped around the microphone. However, with Morrison welded to his mike stand, there is precious little movement on stage apart from the tapping of Manzarek's white-booted foot at the keyboards, Densmore's slickly undemonstrative drumming and Krieger's focused guitar playing. Occasionally, someone can be seen behind the dais supporting the drum kit, but this turns out not to be the bass player (who must have been hidden away somewhere backstage) but a technician fiddling with an unexplained control panel.

German cabaret gives way to Mississippi blues with a thumping version of Willie Dixon's `Back Door Man', which contains the lyric `no one here gets out alive' that was used as the title of the 1981 tribute that the surviving Doors made to Morrison to mark the 10th anniversary of his death from an alleged heroin overdose in Paris. This segues into `Five to One', which itself gives way to `The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)', a virtual monologue about Egypt that is supposed to symbolise Morrison's seething disillusionment with fame and the American Dream and his growing desire to escape.

A blast from the past follows in the form of `Hello, I Love You', which ends with a shot of the moon that aptly presages `Moonlight Drive', which contains some fine work by Krieger on slide guitar. The mood becomes decidedly trippy as Morrison lazily shakes a maraca along with `Celebration of the Lizard', which is followed in rapid succession by snatches of `Horse Latitudes' and `Spanish Caravan' before Morrison pauses to ask the audience what it wants to hear and ignores them to complete `Celebration of the Lizard'.

Those who had shouted out suggestions that the group played their hits must have been gratified to hear the opening chords of `Light My Fire' rip out. But Morrison is evidently less enamoured, as he disappears to the back of the stage to play distracted maracas during Manzarek's solo and then wanders off in search of a cigarette during Krieger's before crouching centre stage with his back to the crowd before bellowing `fire' into the microphone several times before indifferently finishing the song.

Surprisingly, Morrison rouses himself for a splendid take on `Unknown Soldier', which draws a strange response from an audience that seems (from the few shots it is afforded) to be composed of mostly well-dressed middle-class, white males. When Morrison nips to the podium for a crafty drag on his cigarette, there is nervous laughter that intensifies when the singer flings himself to the floor on a snap of the snare drum and sings the next part of the lyric lying flat on his back. What's more, there is a disappointingly feeble cheer when the last line `the war is over' is barked at the climax.

As if sensing this unease, Morrison demands that the house lights are turned down low before the band plays `The End', which he punctuates with rambling digressions about an accident involving six bachelors and their bride, Morrison's desire to open a shop called Grasshopper (which he illustrates by pretending to see an insect on the ground and bends down to reveal it is merely a moth) and a son wanting to kill his father.

Leader flicks through the camera almost as soon as the song stops and the noise of muted cheers and applause can be heard over the credits. One wonders what was said in the dressing-room afterwards, as nobody could have believed this was a vintage performance. But it retains its rarity value in the light of Morrison's passing three years later and, even though it is more likely to appeal to completists than the curious, this still has moments when the Morrison magnetism is fleetingly evident.

Half a century after they were formed, Status Quo are still giving value for money as a live act and few will have any complaints at the end of the 160-minute odyssey Hello Quo!, which reveals just why Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt have, with their various bandmates, managed to record 29 studio albums (six of which went straight to No.1) and rack up 22 Top 10 hits (more than any other group), while spending 415 weeks in the UK singles charts and selling over 128 million albums worldwide.

It all started rather unconventionally, with Rick Parfitt playing in a cabaret trio called The Highlights with twins Jean and Gloria Harrison, while Francis Rossi and Alan Lancaster were forming a combo called The Spectres at Sedgehill School in Catford. Having played their first gig at a sports club in Dulwich in 1962, guitarist Rossi and bassist Lancaster added drummer John Coghlin to the ranks the following year and guitarist Parfitt joined in 1965 after the groups met while playing a summer season at a holiday camp.

In July 1966, The Spectres signed to Piccadilly Records, but the singles `I (Who Have Nothing)'  `Hurdy Gurdy Man' and the prophetically titled `(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet' failed to trouble the charts. Things improved slightly with a change of name to Traffic and then Traffic Jam and the addition of keyboardist Roy Lynes, with an appearance on Brian Matthew's influential BBC radio show Saturday Club enabling them to move closer to stardom with `Almost But Not Quite There'.

A final switch of name to Status Quo in late 1967 saw success finally come with `Pictures of Matchstick Men' and all fans of Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (1984) will recognise elements of their evolution in Quo's stumbling progress  to the top. Having made the US Top 40 (for what would be the only time), Quo stuck with psychedelia for the misfiring `Black Veils of Melancholy' before returning to the charts with the Marty Wilde-composed `Ice in the Sun'. However, following the failure of their second album, Spare Parts, they ditched the Carnaby Street threads that had become their trademark and, with the encouragement of new tour manager Bob Young, they grew their hair, donned denims and adopted the much-mocked three-chord style that Rossi had heard in `Roadhouse Blues'.

The singles `Down the Dustpipe' and `In My Chair' performed reasonably well, as did the  wonderfully named albums Ma Kelly's Greasy Spoon (1970) and Dog of Two Head (1971) . But it was the 1972 album Piledriver (which was the first without Lynes) hat announced the rebirth of Status Quo, as it not only spawned the hit `Paper Plane', but also the concert favourites `Don't Waste My Time' and Big Fat Mama'. Released in September 1973, Hello! contained the hits `Caroline' and `Roll Over Lady Down' and started a run of 13 consecutive gold discs that was only ended when Perfect Remedy could only manage to go silver in 1989.

The acclaim for the albums Quo (1974), On the Level (1975), Blue for You (1976) and Rockin' All Over the World (1977) was matched by the singles success of `Break the Rules', `Down Down' (which made No.1 in the autumn of 1974), `Rain', `Mystery Song', `Wild Side of Life' and `Rockin' All Over the World'. But, despite counting Cliff Richard, Paul Weller, Brian May and Jeff Lynne among their fans (all of whom appear here), Quo were never particularly fashionable. Poor record and commercial deals (including one with Levi's in 1976) also prevented them from making the millions their efforts deserved. The exertions of touring, a growing reliance on drink and drugs and the occasional change in musical direction also began to strain relations.

Thus, while `Again and Again', `Accident Prone', `Whatever You Want', `Living on an Island', `What You're Proposing' and the double A-sided `Lies' and `Don't Drive My Car' continued to chart, John Coghlan was becoming disenchanted and he was fired in mid-tour in 1981. He was replaced by Pete Kircher, while Andy Bown became a permanent fixture on keyboards. But Lancaster detested `Marguerita Time' and nobody expected Quo to record together again after `The Wanderer' crept into the Top 10 in October 1984.

Yet, all four core members can now look back on this period with admirable equanimity and each seems to relish recalling the inspiration behind certain songs, the tall tales of excess gathered on the road and the mixed blessings of the recording the 1977 gig album, Live! But, just when it seemed Quo were destined for the `Where Are They Now?' file, Bob Geldof insisted they opened Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985 and, although it proved to be their last appearance with Lancaster (who was spending more time with his wife in Australia), this phenomenal 20-minute burst of energy not only persuaded Prince Charles to get them involved with the Princes's Trust, but also convinced Rossi and Parfitt to give it another go, with Bown being joined by bassist John `Rhino' Edwards and drummer Jeff Rich, who had played on Parfitt's solo album, Recorded Delivery.

There was an unseemly legal scramble for control of the band name and an ill-advised bid to sue Radio One for daring suggest that musical tastes had moved on and that Quo were now better suited to Radio Two. In truth, hits like `In the Army Now' and `Burning Bridges' were becoming more infrequent and it's telling that the latter part of the documentary focuses more on the things Quo did at the behest of managers David Walker and Simon Porter rather than the new music they made. Thus, they conducted a four-date UK tour in 12 hours to make the Guinness Book of Records and promote the album Rock `Till You Drop (1991); showed up in pubs voted for by fans to boost The Way It Goes (1999); and played on the deck of HMS Ark Royal in 2002. What's more Parfitt and Rossi were even invited to cameo on Coronation Street in 2005.

In the middle of all this frantic activity, Parfitt underwent quadruple by-pass surgery in 1997, but was back on stage within a few weeks. In 2000, Jeff Rich left to spend more time with his family and Matt Letley took over the drum seat he has occupied ever since. Indeed, even he has been part of something of a revival, as the albums Heavy Traffic (2002), In Search of the Fourth Chord (2007) and Quid Pro Quo (2011), which was released with an Official Live Bootleg bonus disc in an exclusive deal with Tesco.

With the current line-up still going strong, it is all the more poignant, therefore, that this hugely enjoyable film should end with a reunion between Rossi, Parfitt, Lancaster and Coghlan to play `In My Chair' in Shepperton Studios. Apparently, plans are afoot for both incarnations of Quo to record in 2013 and no one would bet against them having one or two more Sinatra-like comebacks before they're finally done.