Noemi Olaru Starting with the script. I was surprised to find hat it was written by the author of the book himself; I was sure that it was written by someone else and actually was thinking that Nicholls must be really upset with the way it turned out. It simply flies over the entire book and gives a sense of superficiality. It gives me the impression that it has been made unwillingly, in a "oh, let's just get it done" way.And continuing with the actors. I like James McAvoy, but not in this role. Someone said that he was maybe too mature for an 18-year old and I think that might be right. But, aside that, I didn't see in him the combination of shyness, nerdiness and intelligence of the young man trying to get the girl he was hopelessly in love with AND win the University Challenge to make his dead dad proud. I didn't see it. Oh, let's not forget about the skin problems and the "dead seagull" on his head, seen that in the book they were such a big deal. I would replace McAvoy with Michael Cera. In my opinion, he would impersonate that awkwardness much better, which, exactly!, McAvoy lacks.I would replace Rebecca Hall with Ellen Page or Mae Whitman. I find them much more appropriate for the role. Hall was indeed a little too intense... And a little too obviously in love. Or Emma Roberts or Jane Levy. Of course, all brunettes.I would definitely replace Alice with... I don't know who, but someone more profound. I think that Alice is beautiful, yes, but also surprisingly intelligent and sort of bohemian in her being a popular girl. Maybe Britt Robertson or Gillian Zinser or maybe Alyson Michalka or Amber Heard or Brit Marling.I know that I just transformed it in an all American movie, but they would all speak in a British accent.Maybe if I hadn't read the book I would've liked the film better... But now I know that it can be better!

Jam_Man Just read the book of this film and then immediately watched the movie, and have to say the old cliché is right, the films isn't as good as the book.SPOILERS!!!! There are some key changes in the storyline which change the dynamics of some of the relationships.In the book Spencer is a good friend of his who tries to get him and Alice together and Brian unfairly shuns him after the fight thinking he was hitting on Alice. In the film Spencer is a slime ball who betrays him, when in the book she sleeps with Jackson and then sees another guy at university. Why David Nicholls felt he had to change the characters I don't know, pacing of the film I guess.Movie version Jackson really doesn't match up to the book version, he is painfully embarrassing in the book and much funnier than in the film, although I wonder how that would have looked on film.

Roland E. Zwick "Starter for 10" is a charming coming-of-age comedy set in the Thatcher-era Britain of the mid 1980s. Brian Jackson ("Atonement"'s James McAvoy) is a brainy lad with an insatiable appetite for facts who leaves his home in Essex to attend university in Bristol. Almost immediately, he becomes a member of the school's academic quiz team, falls madly in love with his drop-dead gorgeous teammate, Alice, and catches the eye of an earthy social crusader by the name of Rebecca. Meanwhile, the team prepares for a trivia bowl competition to be broadcast on nationwide TV.Adapted by David Nicholls from his novel and directed by Tom Vaughan, "Starter for 10" has all the drollery, dryness and wit we've come to expect from the best of British humor. McAvoy exudes a great deal of charisma as the intelligent young man who finds that shedding his lower-class origins and proving his smarts in a university setting is not going to be quite as easy as he thought it would be; and Dominic Cooper, Rebecca Epstein, Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch match him in likability and appeal. The movie also playfully captures the sights and sounds of the era in which it is set, with crowds of placard-waving young people dressed in "Flashdance" and New Wave-inspired attire protesting everything from apartheid to pollution to nuclear proliferation while synthesizer-laden music pounds away in the background.But it is as a hilarious and insightful human comedy that the film earns our real attention and affection. And that '80s-infused soundtrack (featuring The Cure and The Psychedelic Furs, among others) may just be the inspiration you need to finally ferret out those long-discarded leg warmers and head bands from the back of your closet.

James Hitchcock "University Challenge" is a long-running quiz show on British television, featuring contests between teams from different universities. The title of this film is taken from the catch phrase "your starter for ten…..", much used by the programme's original presenter, Bamber Gascoigne. I have an interest to declare as in the early eighties I myself appeared on the programme as a member of the team from Magdalene College, Cambridge. I am also familiar with Bristol University as, during the mid-eighties (the film is set in 1985/6), my then girlfriend Melissa was a student there.There has been a long literary tradition in Britain of novels about university life, although this has not always been reflected by the British cinema. There seem to be more films set in public schools; "Goodbye Mr Chips", "The Guinea Pig", "If….." and the two "Browning Versions" are all examples. The opening scenes of "Chariots of Fire" were set in Cambridge and those of the recent "Brideshead Revisited" in Oxford, although in neither case is academic life the real subject of the film. "Starter for Ten" is one of the few British films ("Lucky Jim" is another) to take university life as its main subject matter. (The subject has been much more extensively treated in American films).In form the film is a romantic comedy. The main character is Brian Jackson, a working-class boy from Clacton (a seaside resort in Essex) who wins a place at the prestigious Bristol University. From his childhood Brian has had a passion for knowledge and learning for its own sake, and this earns him a slot on Bristol's "University Challenge" team. The romance element is provided by the two girls in Brian's life, Alice and Rebecca, who have very different personalities. The blonde Alice (a fellow-member of the quiz team) is sexy and glamorous but also shallow and fickle and wildly promiscuous. Or at least she claims to be wildly promiscuous; there is perhaps a hint that her stories of having slept with just about every man who has ever crossed her path were invented to impress the easily-impressed Brian. The brunette Rebecca is less obviously glamorous (although the actress who plays her is in fact very attractive) but more sincere and genuine than Alice; like Brian, she has an interest in left-wing politics.Politics, in fact, play an important role in this film. Brian and Rebecca are seen demonstrating in favour of various fashionable eighties causes (anti-apartheid, nuclear disarmament, etc.), but even more important are the politics of social class. The working-class Brian often feels out of his depth among the more affluent students at Bristol such as Alice and Patrick, the captain of the quiz team who is played as a stuffy, pompous snob. Brian feels the need to remain in touch with his proletarian roots, especially his old school friend, Spencer, who cautions him not to become a "w*nker", by which he presumably means someone like Patrick. This, however, was one of the weakest aspects of the film. It is Spencer who is the real w*nker- an unpleasant and dishonest character, who sleeps with his mate's girlfriend and shamelessly confesses to benefit fraud and embezzling from his employer. Indeed, in the first scene in which he appears he throws a tape belonging to another boy into the sea, for no reason other than sheer devilment. I therefore found it rather disquieting, and patronising to all those who had to struggle with the problem of being unemployed during the eighties, that the scriptwriters seemed to treat Spencer as a working-class hero and the voice of Brian's social conscience.Some of the characters- Alice, Spencer and above all Patrick- were rather clichéd and one-dimensional, but James McAvoy was good as Brian, an engaging and very believable mixture of intellectual precocity and naivety, even though, at twenty-seven, he seemed physically too mature to be playing an eighteen-year-old. This was not, however, his best performance- that must be either "Atonement" or "The Last King of Scotland". The comedienne Catherine Tate gave a nicely judged performance as Brian's widowed mother and Rebecca Hall made Rebecca a likable heroine, even though she was a bit too intense for my tastes. Mark Gatiss gave a pitch-perfect imitation of Bamber Gascoigne, even though in real life there is no physical resemblance between them. There were some very comic moments, especially Brian's disastrous visit to Alice and her seriously weird parents, the sort of people who walk round naked in front of guests but can be surprisingly uptight in other ways.Much of the appeal of the film, at least for me, lies in its nostalgic recreation of the eighties, featuring not only the political causes of the era but also its fashions and hairstyles and, above all, its pop music, (even if some of the songs we hear were not released until after the date when the film is set). There are some similarities with "The History Boys", another film made in 2006 and also set in an educational establishment (in that case a grammar school) during the mid-eighties. (Dominic Cooper, who plays Spencer here, also appeared in "The History Boys"). I don't think "Starter for Ten" is quite as good as "The History Boys", in which scriptwriter Alan Bennett combined an often brilliant wit with some serious themes and sharp social observation, but it is an often amusing and generally enjoyable look at the Age of Thatcher. 6/10