21 Up

DVD review from The Movie Snob

21 Up (B+). I've blogged before about this series of documentaries about a group of British kids -- well, they were 7-year-old kids in 1963, when they were first interviewed on film. Then the filmmakers went back and re-interviewed every seven years after that, so this third installment was made or released in 1977. The previous entries were like 45 minutes each, but this one is a full-length feature. It is very interesting to see these 21-year-old kids, some in college, some married and working, and at least one or two struggling to find a place in the world. I liked a couple of the kids better in this installments than previously. Especially the little boy who thought at age seven that he would go off to Africa and be a missionary. He seemed kind of weird in the first two installments, but now as a math major in college he seems much more grounded and sensible. The rich girl who came off rather badly in 7+7 struck me as a little more sympathetic this time around. It's remarkable how many of the kids had divorced parents by this time. I do have one complaint, that the combination of bad acoustics and thick accents made some parts totally unintelligible to me. Still, I'm really looking forward to the next installment, especially to see how the three boys from the bottom of the class structure fared under Thatcherism.