‘The only person that will ever love me just saw me drink mud…’
Festivals aye. What a time to be alive. Leeds. Tramlines. V Fest. Bingley. Bearded Theory. 2Q. Y Not. These aren’t the last words of a man struck down with a brain eating illness, but rather a list of all the festivals I have attended since arriving at Temple Newsam, a smile on my face and a song in my heart, for Leeds Festival 2002. I say again. What a time to be alive.
Those Leeds Fest glory years are behind me, other than a brief but wonderful return in August 2017, but I still try to get to as many festivals as I can, albeit in a way that is much more grown up and organised these days. I don’t run out of toilet paper anymore. I don’t only eat Pringles. I am experienced enough to know what to expect from your average British music festival. It’s rare you see the festival experience captured on the big screen, perhaps because the ramshackle nature of it is so difficult to recreate. The Festival does a pretty decent job of doing just that.
As with every character played by Joe Thomas, Nick is a down-on-his-luck loser who has a terrible time with women – in this case, his soon-to-be ex girlfriend Caitlin (Hannah Tointon). After embarrassing himself during graduation, Nick is persuaded by his best friend Shane (Hammed Animashaun) that attending a festival is the best way to regroup and move forward.
So, does The Festival capture the erratic decadence that runs through your average music festival? Actually, yeah, I’d say it mostly does. It’s not quite as down and dirty, but it does showcase the highs and lows of leaving a very important part of your brain somewhere. In a field. In Hampshire. It doesn’t really capture the musical side of things, but then, that’s not why we are here. No. You watch Joe Thomas to watch him succumb to humiliation. And there is plenty of that going on here.
Throw in a supporting cast that features Nick Frost, Jemaine Clement, Noel Fielding and even Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods, and you are left with an incredibly watchable, if a little vacuous, rendering of life at a festival. By a twist of fate, I was actually at the festival that provides the backdrop for this movie (the aforementioned Leeds Fest 2017), and it is comforting to know that as I was getting into my own tangled web of poor decisions, Joe Thomas was also in the vicinity, dancing around in his underwear. It’s a funny old world.
The Festival won’t win any awards, but it does a good job in bringing the world of music festivals to life whilst also providing a few laughs along the way. A perfectly fine movie.