Greatest Days Review

Take That was one of the most popular boy bands in the UK in the 1990s. They have a legacy of hit songs, a successful reunion, and in 2017, a jukebox musical. This musical has now been adapted into a film.

Rachel O’Flynn (Aisling Bea) is a paediatric nurse working in London and the biggest Take That fan in the world. She wins a competition to see Take That perform in a concert in Athens, leading her to think about her school friends and plans to take them to the Greek capital, despite not seeing them for 25 years.

There have been plenty of jukebox musicals on the stage and screen. They can offer box-office success since they have recognisable songs that fans could bop along with. Mamma Mia set the benchmark since the show and the film adaptation were colossal hits. Greatest Days wanted to copy that success.

Mamma Mia had some big advantages. Abba was huge, their songs are still popular and whether you love them or hate them, their songs are catchy. The film version had an all-star cast and it was filmed in Skopelos. Greatest Days was a smaller affair: Bea was the only big-name star in the cast. The only other recognisable faces were Alice Lowe and Marc Wootton, and they were only recognisable to British audiences. Greatest Days wasn’t as glamorous as Mamma Mia since it was filmed in London, Clitheroe, and Athens.

Take That’s reach was smaller than Abba’s. They were popular in Europe and Australia but weren’t a worldwide success like Abba. One of the production companies who made the film was Amazon, so Greatest Days will probably be a straight-to-streaming film outside the UK and Ireland. Greatest Days didn’t feel cinematic compared to other musicals. The only time there was a sense of scale was during the final song and dance number.

The issue with many jukebox musicals is trying to make a story fit around the songs. Often the stories are thin, and this happened with Greatest Days. Greatest Days tried to hook itself on a story about friendship with the girls being close as teenagers and needing to reconnect as adults. However, Greatest Days was a film that stretched the concept. Rachel took her jolly sweet time to decide on whether to invite her old friends and when they arrived in Athens they were just fath about for the day. There was a sequence when the ladies travel around Athens on scooters so they could kill time. This was the film killing time before the next important event.

At times the musical numbers did feel forced. They came across as random and added to the film out of obligation. They were clumsy. The first musical number was indicative of this because it showed the young version of Rachel (Lara McDonnell) fantasising about the boys, dancing with them when she does her chores. It was weird to see a girl in a school uniform who was touched up by the boys and were handing her items when she was in the shower. Due to many of these scenes taking place in the girls’ imaginations I like to think they were having a collective breakdown. I will admit I did like the joke where the girls imagined they were dancing with the boyband and the people around them were just seeing a bunch of crazy teenagers.

The musical numbers were better in the second half of the film. This was due to the use of more ballads which allowed for more emotional performances. I will admit this type of pop music was what preferred.

Where the film did succeed was the casting of the young actors. For many of them Greatest Days is their big break and they made sure they did their best. The casting director deserves praise for casting McDonnell as the younger version of Bea’s character since the actresses did look similar. Although it was weird to hear the younger version of Rachel who spoke with an English accent and Bea who kept her Irish accent. McDonnell was from Ireland so Irish is her natural accent and Bea proved she could do an English accent in the Home Alone remake.

The friendship between the teens felt genuine. They were caring and supportive, like how the girls cheered Claire (Carragon Guest) during her driving competition in their own special way. The filmmakers did make an effort to show how the girls’ issues as teens affected them as adults. An example of this was Rachel’s parents who argued and supported her younger brother, which led to her caring for children as a profession but had commitment issues with her boyfriend, Jeff (Marc Wootton).

Bea is a talented comedian, and she has proven herself as an actress and a writer. She even worked as a script editor for Greatest Days. The adult version of Rachel fell to Aine, the lead character in Bea’s dramedy This Way Up. Rachel was shown to have a rapport with her patients and made jokes with them but harboured pain from her past.

As a musical, Greatest Days was sadly a lower-tier offering, even as a jukebox musical. Even big Take That fans wouldn’t get much out of Greatest Days. The younger characters were able to give the film a little bit of a spark.