Directed by Nick Moran
Written by Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh
Starring Ewen Bremner, Leo Flanagan, Jason Issacs
Rated R
Runtime: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Available on demand and AMC+ on Feb 25th

by Whitley Albury, Staff Writer

Biopics are usually kind of weird. I mean, they’re fun, don’t get me wrong. But when it’s about someone who’s still alive, it’s bound to get a little messy. And Creation Stories is no different.

The film tells the (sometimes) true story of Alan McGee, one of the three men behind Creation Records. If the name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, don’t worry. It took me until about halfway into the film to get there, too. Creation Records was the label that at one point had Primal Scream, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and a little band from Manchester on their roster. That band was what saved the label from total financial ruin in the early 90s: Oasis.

It’s basically a visual format of McGee’s autobiography that came out back in 2013, but with many flourishes added by Irvine Welsh (yes, Trainspotting Irvine Welsh). “I realized what I’d be getting was Irvine Welsh, and that’s what I got. I just let him get on with it,” McGee said in an interview. It starts with McGee falling in love with music as a teenager.Teen!McGee (Leo Flanagan) was absolutely wonderful, watching him emulate David Bowie and falling in love with punk rock after seeing the Sex Pistols on tv. I do have written down that the Bowie-to-punk-pipeline is a whole theme, but I digress. McGee drops out of school at 16 to move to London to try to pursue his punk rock dreams. His bands…aren’t very good; they’re passable, but nothing of note. So he just started a label when he’s 23 with Dick Green and Joe Foster.

While going through flashbacks of his early career, it flips back to the slight present, with Adult!McGee (Ewen Bremner) giving an interview to Gemma (Suki Waterhouse). At about the two-thirds mark in the film, she reveals that this is just a puff piece, but she’s interested in another interview down the line. There’s a particularly strange but kind of fun sequence where Alan meets up with a greasy filmmaker (Jason Isaacs) and ends up in a crack house in LA with him. This leads to Alan having a breakdown and going down a sobriety journey.

Overall, aesthetically, the movie is good. Obviously the soundtrack is incredible, as it features so many of my personal favorite indie bands. However, it’s definitely a long one, coming in just under two hours. At the same time, I don’t really see what could have been cut out, because each interaction and scene leads to a pivotal moment. There’s a particularly haunting scene towards the end of the film, when Alan meets with Tony Blair and Jimmy Savile. If, like me, you’re trying to remember why that name rings warning bells, he was a prominent DJ in the UK for a long time…and he was considered the UK’s most prolific sexual abuser. (For once, John Lydon and I agree on something.) If you’re looking for something that tells a bit of music history, then I’d say give this a watch. If you want to see who won out on the world-wide casting call for Liam Gallagher, then you’re one of my people and should watch this. But this is the biopic that’s more for hardcore fans of English and Scottish music history, and less so for the casual viewer.