Blinded By The Light (12A)

When the world is quietly residing in the crapper, the arts react in one of two ways — reflecting the horror of it all, or large doses of feelgood smush to counteract the gloom.

And, as a rule of thumb, the worse the world is the bigger the dose of smush.

Be grateful, then, for Blinded By The Light — a bright beaming, er, yes, light in the gloom.

On the face of it, Blinded is a simple film about a young lad discovering the songs of Bruce Springsteen while growing up in Luton.

But there's far more going on beneath the surface.

This is also a film about finding your place in the world, standing up for what you believe in and how some people are not all they seem.

While also being about The Boss, obvs.

And while the narrative arc is a tad flimsy at times, and the film itself isn't really sure where it is going, the main cast have enough about them to make this work.

In Viveik Kalra the film has a young star (in his first film no less) who is engaging and captivating — you feel and share all the angst and joy he rollercoasters through as life throws him lemons and Bruce tapes in equal measure.

In Nell Williams and Aaron Phagura the film also has two brilliant young co-stars who help to capture the energy of those early Bruce songs.

Now, yes, this is a particularly saccharin piece of fluff at times, but as the film goes on you realise just how necessary this is as the grim reality of life under Thatcher in the late 80s — and the accompanying rise of racism — is brought to bear.

Growing up in this era, we remember some of how bad it was — but it seems, racist abuse aside, we got off lightly compared to towns like Luton which were hit with massive job losses.

And that's something this film captures well — the sad beigeness of the times.

Which is why song and dance numbers at the market, running about montages and impossibly-taken photos overseas just make you grin so much.

While this film has its problems, the one thing that writer/director Gurinder Chadha has got spot on is the feel of this film.

This can happily sit alongside Gregory's Girl (made in 1980) thanks to the look of this piece — and it can also hold it's head up alongside the likes of Pride for balancing social and political messages with outright fun.

Now, as we said, this isn't a perfect film — the story has no real sense of a destination, there are continuity issues and characters get shoe-horned into scenes for no reason.

But it's to the credit of the cast and overall script that these things fail to make a dent in your grin.

There may come a time when we don't need films like this, even though we'll still want them.

But for now, as the world burns and tilts to the far right, we're glad we have them.

Sometimes you just need to sit down, wallow in smush and grin like an idiot.

(Oh, and if you're wondering — and some of you will be — the answer is six. We bought six Springsteen albums after watching this)