Eloise’s dream of the ’60s turns into a nightmare. Backstage, the reality is significantly worse. But after a few nights, Sandy’s hopeful start as a performer has been cynically sidetracked into a tawdry backup-dancer act.
Sandy and a dashing well-connected man (Matt Smith) whirl through nighttime Soho, skipping under the bright marquee of “Thunderball.” (Fittingly, “Last Night in Soho” will appear in theaters alongside another Bond, more than 50 years later.)Įloise soon can’t wait to hop back into bed. Initially, the experience is everything she’s imagined. They are somehow spiritually intertwined. Whenever Sandie passes a mirror, Eloise is reflected back. When Eloise is first transported to to 1965, Wright finds a way to make her present with Sandie, but not quite in the “Christmas Carol” ghostly way. Anyone can relate to the pull a fabled time has on Eloise, but Wright’s own propensity for nostalgia seems to drive “Last Night in Soho.” But it seems tailormade for Wright, the energetic and clever British filmmaker of playful genre combos like “Shaun of the Dead” and “Baby Driver,” whose movies are populated by affectionate film references and well-timed needle drops. It’s a shame because the subject of overindulged nostalgia could be a fruitful one for any film in our much-recycled movie era. A movie that seemed determined to deconstruct genre tropes instead becomes overwhelmed by them. There, a promising premise detours into a muddled murder mystery that stretches the supernatural concept too far to sustain. The set-up of “Last Night in Soho,” which opens in theaters Friday, is smashing but gets squandered by the film’s second half. Not all was so swinging, it turns out, particularly for a beautiful young woman trying to make her way in nightclubs full of leering men. But with time, her vicarious experience of the ’60s turns dark. In her nighttime trips, she mirrors an aspiring chanteuse Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy, soaking up the period style) on a glamorous romp through the heady era. There, she is magically transported to ’60s London whenever she falls asleep and a bedside record player turns on. Eloise flees to a quiet apartment of her own, atop an old building in Soho, owned by an elderly landlady (the late Diana Rigg, in her final screen performance). She arrives a naive fashion student, mocked by her classmates for her old-fashioned tastes. The city’s seedy underbelly she senses on her first cab ride.
In Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho,” it doesn’t take long for the modern-day London to disabuse Eloise of her romantic notions. Review: 'Last Night in Soho' squanders a great premise
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