Shoplifters of the World (Stephen Kijack, 2021)

Shoplifters of the World is quite possibly the worst film I've ever loved. "Based on true intentions," as an opening title reads, it takes place on the day The Smiths broke up! One Denver-area teenager, Dean (Ellar Coltrane, the Boyhood boy!), becomes so despondent over the news that he holds the local metal station DJ, Full Metal Mickey (Joe Manganiello, who also produced), hostage at gunpoint and forces him to play Smiths records all night! Meanwhile, four teens who know how Joan of Arc felt spend the evening negotiating the rocky transition into adulthood while listening to the all-Smiths broadcast and talking in Smiths quotes! 

Forgive the exclamation marks because this is a film that elicits the most giddy reactions, especially if you're a Smiths fan yourself. The first third speeds by in a blinding sugar rush. I was literally on my feet dancing every five or so minutes. Try this exercise while watching - do a shot every time you hear a character use a Smiths lyric or song title. Ok please don't do this because you will be DEAD of severe alcohol poisoning by the thirty-minute mark. Veteran of well-received music documentaries on Scott Walker, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Sid Loft/Judy Garland, Stephen Kijack wrote and directed Shoplifters of the World with little regard for how unnatural a film so permeated with Smiths obsession would come across. It was a miracle that Morrissey could get away with de facto dialogue such as "She said: 'Eh, I know and you cannot sing!' I said: 'That's nothing, you should hear me play piano!'" in the first place. Putting those lyrics in the mouths of characters makes for the corniest movie imaginable. 

But what Shoplifters lacks in smooth narrative propulsion, it more than makes up in the sputtering euphoria (and contempt) associated with fandom. The overall effect is 90 minutes of someone who just cannot shut up about their obsession, apt since it took Kijack over a decade to get the thing before eyeballs. It's the most wince-inducingly earnest film since Empire Records (Allan Moyle, 1995), the theatrical version, not the "Special Fan Edition" which was too "good"/bland and thus far less compelling an artifact about popular music fandom in all its gulping awkwardness. And Shoplifters traffics in more than just the Smiths. You also get a Madonna clone, a Siouxsie clone (pursued by a Robert Smith clone at a party), and a Grace Jones clone. The sparring between Dean and Mickey touches on Alice Cooper, Whitesnake, Whitney Houston, the Stooges, a Kiss lunchbox, etc. Best of all, Mickey holds up and hypes, Oh My God!, the greatest album of the 1970s!

The film loses steam in the middle as the four main teens Come To Terms With Things. But it ends all Pump Up the Volume-style with disparate groups brought together outside of the radio station by, what else, "How Soon Is Now?," the goth "Kumbaya," right? Wrong. No such thing exists, yet another facet to the preposterousness of this film. But Shoplifters needs to be loved, especially given the scathing reviews. So please join me in loving it, fellow Smiths geeks. 

P. S. I assume Morrissey will loathe this film if he ever stoops so low as to watch it. 

Grade: My conscience says B+ but my heart (and butt) say A-minus