That'll Be The Day starts off in the mid 1950's with the Rock N Roll boom about to hit, Jim leaves school and unsure of where his life is going tries a succession of jobs including being a deck chair attendant, working at a funfair and working at a holiday camp. By the end Jim has realised his future is in the music business and is off to make his fortune. The film captures the period extremely well and besides the stand out performance of Essex there are also great roles Ringo Starr (who plays Jim's mate at the holiday camp, funnily enough before he was in the Beatles Ringo actually spent a season at a Butlins holiday camp with his old group Rory Storm and the Hurricanes), Billie Fury and a typically manic Keith Moon. 

Stardust picks up the story in the mid 1960's and Jim is now lead singer in a going places band called The Stray Cats, managed Mike (played by Adam Faith in a very Budgie like performance), other members of the band are made up by Keith Moon on drums, Dave Edmunds on lead guitar, Karl Howman and an egocentric Paul Nicholas, the band start to become successful and it is not long before the rest of the band are resenting all the attention that Jim gets, tensions soon end up ripping them apart and Jim goes on to even greater solo success but finds that success is not what it's cracked up to be. Stardust is a superb film, definitely under rated and one that should be seen by anyone contemplating a career in music.

SPECIFICATIONS
Format: PAL Region 2  Total Running Time: 194 minutes Certificate: 15