Elstree 1976 (2015)

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A talking heads doc where a bunch of normal people talk about themselves. The only thing tying them together, and the only thing making them worth interviewing, is they all played a role in Star Wars. The middle bit, where they talk about their experience on set, is fine. Otherwise....meh.

I am watching this now as I type.All it is is a series of talking heads, most of which are unknown, that tell stories about how they went to Elstree Studios and ended up in Star Wars. I recognised Dave Prowse and that was about all. I know Jeremy Bulloch but have not got to his section at present.The extras, few of whom are unnamed, tell most boring stories about their experiences. This documentary must only be of interest to Star Wars nerds and completists. Random shots of people in costumes from the films fail to make it any more fascinating as their faces are still not shown. I fail to see why this curiosity was made at all.

Maybe slightly too long (yeah, even at 100 minutes), but there's a lot of wonderful anecdotes from all of these 'walk-on' players and actors and people-behind-masks, and it's not completely about the making of Star Wars either. I think that was what pleasantly surprised me the most; not only that, the people talk about where they came from and their personal lives to an extent - all of them, from what I could tell, came from working class backgrounds, had sometimes sick/dead family members, and it was not necessarily always a 'I'm going to be this kind of actor' let alone any kind of recognizable entity - and, after Star Wars, how their lives fared.Some kept on working in movies (there's one guy who went on to be in a number of films as the sort of 'oh, hey, background guy' in films like Living Daylights and Last Crusade), some didn't (the one actress, who barely considers herself that, found that she was more keen on getting her walk-on roles and not really seeking anything more), and some went on to being other iconic figures (Dave Prowse as... cross-walk guy?) There's also a good deal of time spent talking about fans and conventions, and the reactions to how these cons go isn't anything too out of this world (as one of them says, 95% of the people are terrific, the rest are... weird), but it adds another level on to the proceedings.Most interesting is the bit about how there is a sort of tier system as far as people going to these conventions, with one man being interviewed (I forget his name but he's the guy that gets blown up in the X-Wing after shouting "Loosen up!" and recalls not remembering his lines out of order) saying that at one con a guy came trying to make himself into a thing when he wasn't even credited... and then this same guy, one presumes - or someone like him- is interviewed, and I mean, hey, that briefing scene on the Death Star on Yavin had a LOT of guys, you know. And meanwhile a guy like Prowse says with only a bit of bitterness that he isn't asked to conventions anymore, certainly not the official SW ones, but it doesn't seem as anything sad, like he knows he's made some bad blood along the way ...(the context, in case anyone's curious, Prowse used to be really terrible when it came to leaking info about the sequels when they were in production, to the point where he wasn't given the pivotal line in 'Empire' due to his loose lips, so that may be a reason he neglects to mention, but I digress)...The key thing with Elstree is that you don't have to be a major Star Wars fan to see it. I'm sure it helps, and having listened recently to the 'I Was There Too' podcast with Anthony Forrest (the 'Mind-Trick' Stormtrooper, and another character cut from the final version), there's some extra things to find out about these people that make them interesting all within this context. Stylistically it's talking heads and a sprinkling of film clips, stills, (mostly from SW, and sometimes, to emphasize a character as the one neat trick, the film does a kind of back and forth loop like one might see on, of all places, Instagram, but it works as a 'here's this guy or woman').What it comes down to is that these people would be great fun to talk to in sum, and that's the important thing. While the fandom is nice for these people, it's not everything (not even for Prowse, not anymore, or Jeremy Bulloch, the one actor interviewed here that wasn't there in 76), so in a way this is more like a series of human interest stories that happens to have as the connecting thread of 'Oh yeah, that sci-fi movie that the quiet bearded guy was directing). It works for both crowds, even as it's special up to a point, a 'good for one watch' thing.

I'll make my review of this film short and sweet and without much care to finesse the details. I usually like documentaries about people, and a movie about the extras of Star Wars should have been right up my alley. Unfortunately, the film focused on the lives of few extras, some of whom were interesting and some of whom were not. I found a few of the anecdotes of working on the actual film or conventions amusing but there was an awful lot of rambling on by people who I could care less about. I could care less about some guy playing squash with Kiera Knightly's father, or about the guy who had a backache and ended up taking too much Valium. While I often find the stories of regular people interesting,this put far too much focus on people telling mundane details of their lives and careers. A better movie would have been made by interviewing more people and including more interesting details, or alternatively, to follow the lives of one who had a particular unique story or path of this life. You might like this if it covers one of your very favorite favorites, but if you want something more than just filler, i don't recommend it.