As he rages in the night, the lyrics appear as onscreen text like they’re erupting from his consciousness: “Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode/ Explode and tear this whole town apart/ Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart/ Find somebody itching for something to start.” The movie’s most potent scene occurs after yet another family argument, when a furious Javed slaps on his headphones and hears “The Promised Land” for the very first time. It’s only when his Sikh pal Roops (Aaron Phagura) slips him cassette copies of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “Born in the U.S.A.” that our meek young man begins to stand up for himself.
Javed’s miserable at school and at home, with their racist pit of a neighborhood so fired up by the National Front that the local kids take turns urinating through the mail slots of immigrant family houses. His overbearing father (Kulvinder Ghir) just got laid off from the Vauxhall plant and is pushing his boy towards a boring career in business, away from all this writing nonsense. Newcomer Viveik Kalra stars as Javed, a wannabe poet growing up in the ground-down factory town of Luton circa 1987. Kulvinder Ghir as Malik and Viveik Kalra as Javed in "Blinded by the Light." (Courtesy Warner Bros. To be honest, I spent at least half of the running time rolling my eyes, but every once in a while it won me over. In many ways, it’s nearly a replica of Chadha’s 2002 smash “Bend it Like Beckham,” just as relentlessly upbeat and occasionally embarrassing.
Loosely based on journalist Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir “Greetings from Bury Park,” the movie is a brightly-colored, overly-effusive affair preaching the gospel of Bruce. Given all this, one would assume that I’m the ideal audience for “Blinded by the Light,” director Gurinder Chadha’s strenuously crowd-pleasing chronicle of a second-generation Pakistani teen whose obsession with Springsteen helps him find his voice during the dark days of Thatcher’s England. I once went to a Joe Grushecky show at a Jersey Shore nightclub because of rumors that his buddy Bruce might show up (he didn’t), and in 2003, I maxed out a credit card to see The Boss do a solo acoustic benefit for the now-defunct DoubleTake Magazine at the Somerville Theatre. When I tell my friends this story, the only thing that surprises them is that I wasn’t the one doing the “Bruce-ing.” I’ve seen Springsteen in concert 26 times in five different states and could quite happily bore you for hours on end with minutiae regarding band lineups, bootlegs and other unheralded aspects of E Street history. Quite a few years ago, I was at the Brattle Theatre watching John Ford’s 1940 adaptation of “The Grapes of Wrath.” There weren’t many people in attendance but those of us who were sat in rapt attention and respectful silence, right up until Henry Fonda recited Steinbeck’s famous speech at the end - you know, the one Springsteen sings in “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” All of the sudden, from the back of the balcony, a voice bellowed out “BRUUUUUUUUUCE!”
Pictures) This article is more than 2 years old. Viveik Kalra as Javed in "Blinded by the Light." (Courtesy Warner Bros.