Own the rights?
18 out of 20 people found the following review useful: I love this movie, 27 May 2004 Author: (colinliddell@blueyonder.co.uk) from glasgow scotland
I love this movie.Its my fav movie of all time ,Everytime i watch it its like meeting an old friend again.It is so rich with subtle humour and possibly every scene makes me chuckle.the teenage anguish is never over played and ever actor in the film has never surpassed there performances in this movie growing up in Scotland myself i still don't feel that the movie is regional and anyone who is able to see it please do so .The clothes are dated but the humour is still spot on.This film is a Scottish gem and should be given more praise.I just cant fault it.If i had to cut my DVD collection down to two gregorys girl and this is spinal tap would be my only choices.
18 out of 20 people found the following review useful: Charming comedy of awkward adolescence which needs no excuse., 30 August 1999 Author: simon-118 from London
There is only one thing negative I could say about Gregory's Girl...it makes you sad that the innocence of first love and first dates is gone forever, and also makes me wish my school had been as cool as Gregory's. Excellent performances by all and sundry, no attempts to sacrifice realism for laughs and Clare Grogan at her prettiest. Special mention must be given to the music, wonderfully twee and with a kind of nostalgic delight. Only Bill Forsyth seems able to avoid mawkishness yet still make utterly inoffensive and delectable movies. One of my top ten favourite films and one I never stop enjoying.
13 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Really Sweet, 5 February 2004 Author: syllavus from Massachusetts, USA
I've caught this movie a few times playing on Stars in the states, and there is something indescribably charming about it. Maybe I'm biased because I've always loved British movies and television shows, but I found this movie very cute. The story is nothing big and dramatic, just a boy liking a girl and learning a bit about himself and about love in general in the end. The lead character of Gregory is very convincing and very real, you like him but at the same time you can't help wincing a bit at his awkwardness, especially in the scene where he's helping Dorothy out in football by playing goalie. I find this movie very refreshing when compared to teen comedies that are being made nowadays. Gregory's Girl has a realness and innocence to it that is severely lacking in Hollywood now. And also thanks to whoever posted that the US version had the Scottish accents dubbed. I always noticed there was something "off" about the voices, especially the younger kids and now I see why. I hope someday I can see a copy with the original voices intact.
9 out of 9 people found the following review useful: Did you know that when you sneeze….?, 22 May 2006 Author: jonmeta from Zaragoza, Spain
A lot of so called comedies get one or two big laughs in the whole film, often by reaching down for a reference to one or another substance that comes from the human body. Gregory's Girl makes me laugh every few seconds, and the only mention of a bodily excretion I can remember is Andy's "chat up line" in the school cafeteria: "Did you know that when you sneeze, it comes out of your nose at a 100 miles an hour?" Even though I thought I knew all the funny bits after seeing it so many times, each viewing finds me laughing at things I hadn't noticed before, as well as at all the other bits that never seem to grow stale.There's the occasional Pythonesque line, as the football coach's description of the "two basic skills" of a goal scorer: "Ball control, shooting accuracy, and the ability to read the game." But Forsyth the writer creates a constant stream of little gems that are very much his own style of wry humour, taking real life and stretching it just that little bit further, but not so far that it's no longer recognisable. He's got teenage life down perfectly. Girls talk, plan, and seem to know what they want. Guys are clueless. Guys are obsessed by numbers. But girls know all the best ones.It's fun to see how comic setups and situations from Gregory's Girl come back in Forsyth's Local Hero ("everyone's second favourite film", as Mark Kermode put it), deeper and more fully developed. Despite the dated fashions and soundtrack, highly recommended.
9 out of 10 people found the following review useful: The film which best captures what it is like to be an ordinary teenager, 4 September 2007 Author: James Hitchcock from Tunbridge Wells, England
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
To celebrate my 400th review for IMDb, I turn to another of my favourite films. "Gregory's Girl" was one of the first masterpieces of the eighties revival of the British film industry which was to produce the Oscar-winners "Chariots of Fire" and "Gandhi", and films of the calibre of "Local Hero" "Educating Rita", "The Missionary", "A Private Function" and "Hope and Glory".Like many excellent British films, "Gregory's Girl" has a strong sense of place. Writer/director Forsyth set the film in his native Scotland, but not the tourist Scotland of glens, tartans and single malt whiskies. ("Local Hero", by contrast, is set in an idyllic Highland village). "Gregory's Girl" was the first-ever film to feature Cumbernauld New Town, a modern town between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Cumbernauld's town centre has been variously designated (chiefly by local residents) as the building in Britain most deserving of demolition or (by the international conservationist group DoCoMoMo) as one of the sixty key monuments of post-war architecture. This does not seem the most promising setting for a film, but Forsyth is able to invest the town's bleak modernist housing estates with a surprising amount of melancholy charm.Gregory is a teenage schoolboy who falls in love with Dorothy, the attractive girl who succeeds him as centre-forward of the school soccer team. Gregory loses his position and is demoted to goalkeeper after the team lose eight games in a row; of his potential replacements, only Dorothy shows any talent, much to the disgust of the sexist games master Phil, who feels that the sport should be for boys only. At first Dorothy responds to Gregory's ardour with polite indifference, but when he asks her for a date, she accepts. Things do not, however, turn out quite as he had planned. Dorothy and two of her friends, Carol and Margo, have conspired to set Gregory up with a fourth girl, Susan, who has always been keen on him.John Gordon Sinclair (Gregory) and Claire Grogan (Susan) have gone on to become well-known members of the British acting profession; Claire also had a pop career as the lead singer with Altered Images. None of the cast, however, were famous at the time, and few others went on to stardom. Dee Hepburn's beauty and enchanting performance as Dorothy made her seem a promising newcomer, but her acting career was to prove a brief one; her only subsequent role was in the much-derided soap opera "Crossroads". (According to one version, her lack of success was due to an inability to master any accent other than her native Scottish one).Part of the film's appeal, however, is precisely that it does feature a cast of unknowns, easy to envisage as genuine Scottish teenagers. It made a refreshing change from American high school movies which, then as now, generally used established actors in their late twenties or even thirties; the unkind joke about Stockard Channing's character in "Grease" was that she would leave school when she passed her exams or had her menopause, whichever happened first.Although the cast may be little-known, however, all play their parts superbly; there is not a single false note. Gregory's friends emerge as characters in their own right. Eric is a photography buff, Steve a talented cook. (There is an element of role reversal in that a girl is the star of the football team and a boy the star of domestic science classes). The slightly older Billy has left school and is working as a window cleaner's mate, giving him a certain status among his former classmates. Andy is the sort of know-all who is always trying to impress by coming out with nuggets of useless (and probably incorrect) information. According to him there are eight women to every man in Caracas, Venezuela; the dubious accuracy of this statistic does not prevent him and a friend from making a vain attempt to hitch-hike there, believing they will have more chance of picking up girls. Other notable contributions come from Jake D'Arcy as the manic Phil, who believes he is a football coach of genius despite the poor performances of his teams, and Allison Forster as Gregory's worldly-wise little sister Madeline.Madeline, who is only ten years old but who has a depth of insight into human relationships that would put most agony aunts to shame, is not really a realistic character. "Gregory's Girl", however, is not an altogether realistic film, despite its ordinary setting. Like Forsyth's other masterpiece, "Local Hero", it contains elements of magical realism, the juxtaposition of the everyday with the fantastic. The strangest element was the boy wandering round the school dressed as a penguin. No explanation was ever given for his bizarre costume or for his inability to find his way to the right lesson, and yet this detail seemed perfectly at one with the mood of the film. Much of the humorous dialogue also had something of the surreal about it; Phil, asked by the headmaster how Dorothy will cope with having to shower with the boys, replies "Oh, she'll bring her own soap".I was at university when I saw this film in the cinema in 1981, having left school two years earlier. I could therefore immediately sympathise with its teenage characters particularly the lanky, awkward Gregory, desperate to impress both his friends and the girls. It always struck me that he was less in love with Dorothy herself than he was with the idea of having a girlfriend to boast about; he is quite happy to end up with Susan and even more happy with the idea that having been seen with three girls in one evening has won him the reputation of being a ladies' man. I still think that the best-ever coming-of-age film is "Rebel without a Cause", but that is a tragic drama about situations outside most teenagers' experience. "Gregory's Girl" is the film which best captures what it is like to be an ordinary teenager. 10/10
10 out of 12 people found the following review useful: Love causes acne. Or vice-versa., 11 September 1999 Author: sumocat from Cleveland, Ohio
While I'm sure I was a teenager once (my parents will attest to that), I was never a teenager in Scotland. This film makes me wish I had been.This unpretentious tale of adolescent adoration (all right, puppy love), is one of the purest, most enjoyable, romance films I have ever seen.Unlike American cinema where the main characters would be satisfying raging hormonal urges in gratuitously graphic sexual detail, this film by Mr. Forsythe catches the true essence of "young love" by letting the cast be what they are. Simply young people with an awkward sense of decency and a genuine curiosity for the opposite sex.This is a must see, especially if you ever thought you might have been in love or think you are now.Try to see the uncut version, as the British film industry has a different sense of 'Family Values' (whatever that is).I love the secondary sub-plots. So, pay close attention.
11 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Wonderful rites of passage movie, says more about growing up than a million manuals ever could., 7 January 2004 Author: (john@plazacinema.org.uk) from LiverpoolUK
Quite simply, one of the best British movies ever made, in fact one of the best movies, period. I watch it about three times a year and never tire of it. A film that is up there with the classic Ealing comedies and has every right to be classed alongside the best. John Gordon Sinclair exudes a gawky, gangling charm as the lovesick Gregory and the rest of the cast are perfect.Jake D'Arcy is wonderful as Phil Menzies, the ambitious sports master, the brilliant Chick Murray is the pompous headteacher, Dee Hepburn is Dorothy, the confident, dedicated new member of the soccer team, Gregory is besotted with her. Clare Grogan of Altered Images is Susan, who along with Carol and Margo conspires to make it an evening that Gregory will never forget. Who's going to be Gregory's Girl? Is it any of them, or is it his kid sister Madeline, 10-going-on-20 years old and his mentor. Special mention goes to Rob Buchanan and Graham Thompson as Gregory's mates Andy and Charlie, who feel that life is passing them by and resolve to get girlfriends. Charlie only has one line, right at the end of the film, but it remains my fave line. If you haven't seen Gregory's Girl, quite simply, you are inadequate!
6 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Adolescent Fun, 3 August 2000 Author: jimidom from Houston, TX USA
This is one of the funniest and most warm-hearted films ever! John Gordon Sinclair and Dee Hepburn were absolutely wonderful in this story of teenage love and the sudden twists & turns that occur when you think you've met THE ONE, but then someone else...
7 out of 8 people found the following review useful: takes me back to teenage years..., 16 October 2004 Author: suehockleyford (purpleviolinsue@hotmail.com) from Worthing, England
Back in the eighties when my family first purchased a (Betamax!) video recorder, I watched this all the time. There's just something about the combination of youngster actors who obviously hadn't come from the usual stage schools, the lines from minor characters that you almost miss the first few times (the school reporter - 'I want to interview you and that girl in 4A who had the triplets' - and so many more!) and just the general surrealism (the penguin wandering around the school must surely have influenced the writers of 'Teachers'?) There's a wealth of bizarre characters, both pupils and staff, and for someone who was 13 when it came out, it will never fail to take me back to those awkward teenage crushes and raise a smile. Well, several smiles actually.
7 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Forget John Hughes - this was the real eighties, 21 January 1999 Author: Mark Dunlop (mdunlop@yahoo.com) from ABZ
What John Hughes did for eighties America, Forsyth has done for Eighties Britain with this little gem. It captures the boredom of a new town, then rips one character's life, such that it was, to pieces by having a girl replace him on the football team. Of course he can't help himself but to fall in love.I adore this film - well, love it anyway. It quite simply makes me want to be a teenager again. But not in anywhere,USA like so many of Hughes' films, but at home in Scotland. It's just a shame that the three main players - John Gordan Sinclair, Claire Grogan, and to a lessor degree, Dee Hepburn - were never able to build on this.A one off that has to be seen ....
Add another review
