Irish comedian Aisling Bea shines in new musical – Greatest Days evaluation

Unlike Elton John and ABBA, Take That by no means broke America, so their jukebox musical doesn’t have Rocketman or Mamma Mia’s Hollywood {dollars} to fund its journey down reminiscence lane.

As director Coky Giedroyc’s adaptation of Tim Firth’s 2017 stage manufacturing is a British movie, it has to depend on a sure ramshackle allure to paper over its barely cheap-looking song-and-dance routines.

Thankfully, her wonderful solid and her choreographer Drew McOnie have that in abundance. Irish comedian Aisling Bea is massively likeable as Rachel O’Flynn, a kids’s ward nurse haunted by a tragedy she suffered as a teen.

When she wins a radio contest providing an all-expenses-paid journey to see 90s group The Boys stage a comeback live performance in Athens, she contemplates a reunion of her personal.

Snubbing her clingy companion Geoff (Marc Wootton), she invitations her three greatest buddies from faculty – Claire (Jayde Adams), Heather (Alice Lowe) and Zoe (Amaka Okafor) – to revisit their favorite boy band from their teenage years.

Flashbacks to Nineteen Nineties’ Clitheroe introduce us to their 16-year-old selves as they put together to see The Boys in Manchester.

A youthful Rachel (Lara McDonnell) is so excited, she imagines the lads performing Pray in her kitchen. These fantasy sequences recur as a sporadically amusing and touching script jumps between the 90s and the current day.

In the previous, the ladies gyrate with their idols on a bus to Relight My Fire, as the driving force drags as much as sing Lulu’s half.

Most entertaining is an easyJet flight that turns right into a Busby Berkeley-inspired track and dance routine with the air hostesses kicking their legs to Shine.

“And this could be the greatest day of our lives,” sings Gary Barlow within the title observe. And it is also essentially the most British musical sequence we’ll ever expertise.

Greatest Days, Cert 12A, In cinemas now