Rock 'n' Roll,Jazz and Skiffle.They were the musical choices facing teenage boys in the mid 1950s.The ones who spent a lot of time in their rooms reading quietly and listening to the wireless tended towards jazz,tortured intellectuals who who wanted to ban the bomb and carry washboards beneath their duffel coats preferred skiffle,and those with a healthy interest in sex picked up their Hofners and tried to knock out "Be -bop a Lula". Jim Mclaine certainly falls within the latter category and is a "Bad Boy" before his time.With an over - protective single mother,he drops out from his Grammar School and drifts around the south coast before taking up with a Funfair.Here he cements the reputation of fairworkers as careless Lotharios. Altrhough capable of charm when necessary,he is in fact rather an unpleasant boy whose rejection of his mother is reflected in his conduct towards his sexual conquests. Mr D.Essex manages the difficult task of portraying both sides of his character and making them seem convincing. The movie rather sweetly captures the era of Post - Suez optimism when we could ride our bicycles around the streets without being shot at by warring gangs and hang around town centres without being watched warily by policemen in full body armour carrying gas spray cans. Jim wants to be a rock'n'roll star and makes the irrevocable step in the last scene of the movie where he goes into a music shop and is handed a guitar. Of course it turned out that rock'n'roll was not here to stay after all and only ageing ex - Teds and OAP bikers listen to Jim's kind of music any more as it proceeded to morph into "Rock" and all its sub - divisions of guitar widdle. To see how Jim coped (or failed to cope) with that you must watch "Stardust",the brilliant follow - up to this movie,but "That'll be the day" - in its own right - is a highly enjoyable movie and a wallow in nostalgia for those of us who wish it was still 1958.

David Essex stars in the first of two films about Jimmy Maclaine, a young man who wants to be a rock star. Here we follow Maclaine as his father comes home from the war, leaves his family and Maclaine grows up, running away from home as a teen to make his future in the world, first by the sea, then at a holiday camp and finally in a carnival. Eventually he returns home to start his own family. Slice of life in late 50's early 60's as rock music was shaking everything up and the post war kids were looking for a way out. I had always heard this was the better of the two Maclaine films (Stardust being the second) but I wasn't really impressed. For what ever reason I couldn't really connect with what was happening on screen. Perhaps I was waiting for something the film isn't, the sequel charts Maclaine's rise and fall as a pop star, so I was waiting for a music film instead of a family drama and character study (come on you have Ringo Starr, Keith Moon and Dave Edmunds in the cast don't you think it'll be a music film?). On some level it made watching the sequel better, but ultimately it wasn't something I need to see again. You may feel differently since the film isn't bad, just one that I didn't connect to.

Set in a plausibly dreary and defiantly anti-nostalgic late 50's era Britian, this grimly serious kitchen sink drama relates the turbulent up and down tale of one Jim MacLaine (superbly played by David Essex of "Rock On" fame), a discontent working class bloke who wants to be a rock star so he can successfully transcend the dismally unrewarding banality of plain old normal bourgeoisie existence and live a free, spontaneous, not attached to any heavy responsibility life. Jim drops out of school and moves out of his mother's house. He winds up going nowhere slowly, selling beach chairs on the arid shore in order to scrape by, until a shrewd smoothie busboy (Ringo Starr in a surprisingly excellent performance) takes the shy, naive Jim under his wing and teaches the heretofore sweet, guileless lad the fine art of picking up girls and gypping patrons at the local carnival of their spare change. Pretty soon Jim degenerates into a cold, heartless womanizing cad who's incapable of commitment and, as long as he refuses to settle down, just a few steps away from the fame he seeks.Loosely based on John Lennon's actual early exploits, with an outstanding golden oldies soundtrack and a rough, seedy, marvelously unglamorous and unromanticized depiction of the 50's, "That'll Be the Day" offers an engrossingly seamy and minutely detailed evocation of drab blue collar life, chiefly centering on the pertinent role rock music plays in serving as an outlet for overcoming the horrid ordinariness of said average lifestyle. Claude Whatham's astutely observant direction delivers a striking wealth of piquant incidental touches -- the ghastly shabbiness of Jim's cheap apartment, the faulty, out-of-tune speakers at a rundown dance hall, the grungy sleaziness of the fairground Jim works at, an incredibly cheerless wedding reception -- which in turn brings a splendidly gritty, lived-in conviction to Ray Connelly's meticulous, unsparingly downbeat script. Moreover, the acting is uniformly top-notch (Essex's finely underplayed characterization is especially strong), with commendable work turned in by Rosemary Leach as Jim's doting, concerned mother, James Booth as Jim's restless and unreliable absentee deadbeat dad, and Billy Fury as hotshot lounge singer extraordinaire Stormy Tempest. A sterling cinematic testament to rock music's undying allure and magical ability to create hope in an otherwise bleak and thankless world.

David Essex got the lead role, through two films, in this story of a wanabee pop star who leaves his family and home life for a shot at the big time. Abandoned by his father as a child, Jim lets history repeat itself simply for his ambition - through 'That'll Be The Day', which establishes him as a musical talent with room to grow, through to the bleak 'Stardust' which focuses on the ups and downs of fame.Ray Connolly's script for TBTD is ironic and clever, and gives scope to a large number of characters you remember - Rosemary Leach and Rosalind Ayres good as Jim's mother and girlfriend, Ringo Starr much better than expected as Mike who works on the fairground and takes the impressionable and cocky Jim under his wing. Mike would develop into Jim's manager in 'Stardust', where he was played by Adam Faith.Billy Fury plays TBTD's biggest concession to a 'real pop star' as the unlikeable Stormy Tempest, while Keith Moon and Karl Howman, both in the 'Stardust' band appear briefly. Also involved in the film was the great Bonzo vocalist Viv Stanshall.'That'll Be The Day' is often cited as the better film of the two Jim MacLaine feature, but I personally prefer the overblown, stoned, egotistical character we see in the sequel. David Essex is excellent throughout the two movies, though. The soundtrack album - a huge four-sider groaning with 50s period hits and pastiches - is still well worth a listen, although precious little of it appears in this film.