Review – Gregory’s Girl

Not many directors are good enough to shoot a comedy about the awkwardness of teenage romance and actually pull it off. Fortunately Bill Forsyth is just such a director. Though this is one of his earlier projects, fans of his better-known movies – particularly Local Hero – will recognize Forsyth’s unselfconscious, quirky wit. If I were to try to summarize the plot, I’d describe this as the story of Gregory, a Scottish teen infatuated with the new girl playing on his soccer team. But that makes this sound more like a John Hughes movie, and nothing could be further from the truth. The delight is in the details, the odd little jokes with no attempt at explanation that set this far apart from the countless rounds of Hollywood tedium on the same general subject. My only regret is that I didn’t see this when I was an adolescent, because there were many times in my own younger days when I would have relished a frank acknowledgment that even though the whole high school thing sucked there were at least some times when it wasn’t all that bad. Worth seeing