Sore Glums Absolute Beginners

By RICHARD CORLISS

Musicals used to trade in innocence. Fred Astaire could get a thrill just from being caught in the rain with Ginger Rogers. Gene Kelly shouted, "Gotta dance!" as if it were a battle cry or a mating call. But those carefree days seem as distant as Ike and Mamie; musicals have more serious topics--Argentine dictators, pointillist painters--weighing on their souls. Musicals used to be called, oh, High Spirits. Now London's hot song-and-dance show is Les Miserables, which locals translate as The Glums. That is precisely the disease afflicting the modern musical. Artistic ambition and a social conscience are all very fine, but please, sirs, can we have our pleasure back?

On this score, Absolute Beginners is a pretty little cheat. It promises a larkish tour of London in 1958, the year Britain discovered both rock 'n' roll as an anarchic force and teenagers as a voracious new consumer class. Colin (Eddie O'Connell) is a bright lad who hits the Top 40 of success snapping pictures of mods and trads; Suzette (Patsy Kensit) is a proto-Twiggy fashion model- designer. Sade, Ray Davies and the snakily elegant David Bowie appear in elaborate production numbers--upmarket rock videos, really--and Julien Temple, a master director of the short music form, revs up the visuals so that everything looks like a display in the biggest, fanciest boutique window.

It is too good to last. The film's cynical insider tone turns apocalyptic for a third act of corrupt development schemes and race riots. The preachy message has drowned out the music. And what began as a giddy ride in the Time Machine ends up as angst for the memories. R.C.