Stardust review – David Bowie biopic is an odd-couple oddity

Bowie’s 1971 trip to the US – the inspiration for his Ziggy Stardust persona – is reimagined as a comedy road trip with his hopelessly uncool publicist

The very talented actor and musician Johnny Flynn here makes a perfectly game attempt to impersonate the young David Bowie in this ironised and fictionalised account of Bowie’s 1971 US publicity tour which – partly – inspired his Ziggy Stardust persona. Flynn carries off Bowie’s clothes and delicate mannerisms plausibly enough and, impressively, he does his own singing. But, all too often, this Bowie looks as if he is presenting TV’s Bake Off.

Bowie arrived at Washington DC’s Dulles airport where an immigration official called him a “fag”, and where Mercury Records publicity man Ron Oberman (played here by comic Marc Maron) arrived to meet him, having got a lift to the airport from his mum and dad, and took the bemused Bowie back for a home-cooked family meal, like a 13-year-old foreign exchange student. The movie shows this, but where in reality the tour saw Bowie fly to major cities, meeting with Oberman a few times and doing interviews, the movie escalates this to a huge comedy-odd-couple road trip. Oberman and Bowie head across the country in Ron’s uncool, un-rock’n’roll station wagon, with Bowie playing disastrous, low-key gigs and Ron becoming a Spinal Tap-type PR goof who is mortified at the poor turnout.

Meanwhile, back in London, Jena Malone plays the heavily pregnant Angie Bowie, who comes across as a charmlessly shrill and bad-tempered scold, and David is having traumatised flashback memories of his troubled brother Terry (Derek Moran). The movie makes a laboured connection between Terry’s mental illness and David’s dark imaginings, a connection that surely comes close to misunderstanding the nature of schizophrenia. And so the tour goes on, and Bowie providentially hears (or hears about) the music of Iggy Pop and cult psychobilly star Legendary Stardust Cowboy, which fed into the Ziggy Stardust creation.

This is a strained, frustrating concoction that doesn’t do its subject justice. Flynn really can sing, though.

• Stardust is available from 15 January on digital platforms.

Contributor

Peter Bradshaw

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Stardust review – David Bowie biopic has no sparkle
This clumsy fictionalised account of Bowie’s formative first US tour is as pedestrian as its subject was remarkable

Simran Hans

17, Jan, 2021 @11:00 AM

Article image
Bowie biopic Stardust 'won't have any of dad's music' says son
Duncan Jones says family has not approved film, but instead proposes Neil Gaiman project

Andrew Pulver

01, Feb, 2019 @10:25 AM

Article image
Eddie Izzard meets Noel Fielding: what I learned from the Bowie biopic Stardust trailer
A gorgeous, big-budget, fully authorised biopic of a music legend, packed with hit after glorious hit? Yes please – let me know if you find one

Stuart Heritage

29, Oct, 2020 @12:50 PM

Article image
One Life review – Anthony Hopkins in extraordinary true story of ‘British Schindler’
Hopkins stars as Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 Jewish children from the Nazis – alongside Helena Bonham Carter on mighty form

Peter Bradshaw

28, Dec, 2023 @11:00 AM

Article image
A Bowie biopic with no Bowie songs? Stardust isn't the first to try
Many have attempted to bring Ziggy’s story to the screen. But there are ways of working around copyright restrictions

Steve Rose

11, Jan, 2021 @9:00 AM

Article image
David Bowie: screen oddity

He's played a stranded alien, a vampire cellist and a pretty PoW – but David Bowie rarely gets his due as an actor. Ryan Gilbey talks to the directors who know him best about an original, 'incandescent' talent

Ryan Gilbey

27, Aug, 2012 @3:19 PM

David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust … (40th Anniversary Edition) – review
One of rock high-water mark albums gets its best-sounding remaster yet, writes Dave Simpson

Dave Simpson

06, Dec, 2012 @10:00 PM

Article image
David Bowie and Iggy Pop's Berlin years set for big-screen biopic
Death of a President director Gabriel Range will explore pair's friendship and collaborations in Germany in the 70s

Sean Michaels

07, Feb, 2013 @11:21 AM

Article image
I Wanna Dance With Somebody review – smooth Whitney Houston biopic
Naomi Ackie is excellent in the title role and the film delivers all the singer’s big hits, but it swerves the difficult questions

Peter Bradshaw

21, Dec, 2022 @2:00 PM

Article image
Creation Stories review – mythmaking and megalomania in likable Alan McGee biopic
Irvine Welsh’s cracking adaption of an autobiography by the ‘President of Pop’ flashes from My Bloody Valentine to his discovery of Oasis

Cath Clarke

18, Mar, 2021 @9:00 AM