Yahoo News T2 Trainspotting review: There's no lust for life
"Nostalgia. That's why you're here. You're a tourist in your own youth."
Sickboy there, now Simon, berating Renton, now Mark, at an impromptu memorial for Tommy (Kevin McKidd), who you may remember passed in the first Trainspotting film after getting hooked on scag and dying of an HIV related illness.
A pretty emotional part of the original that pops up as a crowbarred bit of retro exposition in T2.
And that's the whole problem with the film.
It's bathed in nostalgia. It references Trainspotting constantly, but rather than reigniting the subversive, energetic flame, it just makes you miss it.
It's like they're chasing the high but have lost the lust for life.
Pre-credits, then: chubby long-haired Renton running in a gym has a heart attack, Begbie's in jail and denied parole, Sickboy's a career blackmailer and Spud is out of work, out of luck and estranged from his wife and kid. Bad times.
There's humour and energy, a remix of 'Perfect Day' (the soundtrack is packed with aural nods) and a feeling of glorious reunion with all the major characters 20 years after Renton f**ked off with the swag at the end of Trainspotting in 1996.
The trouble is it doesn't go anywhere. A plot that revolves around Begbie's revenge, a half-arsed scheme to open a brothel and the fractious relationship between the old friends after Renton's betrayal is very much second to flashbacks, matching shots and references to 20 years ago. This includes toilets, a bit on a car, and Kelly Macdonald, only in it briefly, as a lawyer telling Renton the girl he is with is too young.
While it's an undeniably well-made movie, packed with visual gags, slo-mo, sharp cuts and cutaways trying to recreate the flair of the first film, and there are some laugh-out-loud gags as well as points of poignant tragi-comedy that director Danny Boyle is particularly good at, it can't ever quite reach the euphoric heights of the original.
At release, Trainspotting was accused of glorifying drug use and while it was full of hard-hitting bleakness the gang was so charismatic, subversive and free you wanted to spend time with them.
Now they're a bunch of broke middle-aged men who don't see their kids and are criminals, liars, bullies and thieves. It's just a bit depressing. True, that's how it would go, and if the two films had been released back-to-back like Kill Bill we might feel differently. But this is a comedown without the high.
Only Ewen Bremner as Spud elicits any real sympathy, a gentle ex-junkie whose life is in pieces trying to find redemption in writing.
Begbie is perhaps the biggest disappointment, once a terrifying, unpredictable live-wire who we loved to hate, now just a horrible, violent ex-con who's a dick to his wife and son, and is no more impactful than any other abusive barroom drunk.
If you're a fan of the original there are references, flashbacks and, yes, the sweet tourism of nostalgia to enjoy which compensate for a paucity of plot. Boyle is a good filmmaker, but this isn't a good story.
And if you've never seen Trainspotting, there's basically nothing here for you at all.
If you have, it's worth visiting with Renton and the gang for a Where Are They Now '90s hit. But you might want to choose DVD.
Director: Danny Boyle; Screenplay: John Hodge; Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle; Running Time: 117 mins; Certificate: 18
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