IN ITS peculiar, haphazard way, director Mat Whitecross’s film charts the formative years of young Ian (Wesley Nelson) after he contracts polio, which leaves him paralysed down the left hand side of his body.

Sent to a school for disabled children, he falls victim to tyrannical tutor Hargreaves (Toby Jones) but clings onto the words of his father (Ray Winstone): “Nobody out there’s gonna help you.

%movie(21965)

“You’re born alone and you die alone.”

Musical ambitions consume Ian in the 1970s and he neglects his wife Betty (Olivia Williams) and children Jemima (Charlotte Beaumont) and Baxter (Bill Milner).

In an attempt to rebuild bridges with the lad, Ian allows Baxter to live with him and new girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris), shouting down the lad’s headmistress when she calls to find out why he isn’t in school.

The youngster witnesses his father’s descent and inevitably tries to mould himself in his father’s image, bringing Baxter into close contact with the pills, thrills and bellyaches of the title.

Serkis’s riveting portrayal of the musical icon sucks all of the oxygen out of Whitecross’s vision.

Hyperactive editing undermines some sequences, leaving us disoriented, as if we’ve been clobbered by the infamous rhythm stick.

See it at the Empire