Music biopics are sometimes noteworthy for what they don’t do. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, an exuberant look at the life of legendary punk rocker Ian Dury, avoids many of the abused tropes of musician biographies. There’s no moment where we see our protagonist strutting down a London street, overhearing the phrase ‘Rhythm Stick’ and then gazing off into the middle distance.

Equally, the film avoids being simply a lurid peek into a man’s private life by telling Dury’s story in the manner of his music. Dury frequently narrates his life from onstage in an abandoned auditorium, in full ghoulish make-up. His music hall style suits the gothic Victoriana element of his troubled childhood. Infected by a polio epidemic at the age of seven, he was sent to an institution for disabled children as unwelcoming as a workhouse, with a cackling orderly who made his life hell. We see little of Dury’s adolescence and young adulthood, cutting directly to the anarchic beginnings of his music career, being booed off stage, plagued by in-fighting and a comatose drummer.

Andy Serkis’ performance as Dury is excellent, capturing his energy, anger, and wit. In the stage performances Serkis perfectly masters the shifts from nonchalant raconteur to frenzied entertainer, performing gleeful covers of hits like ‘Reasons to be Cheerful, Pt.3.’ Father and son relationships are the emotional core of the film, beginning with Dury’s relationship with his caring but distant father (Winstone). Dury often neglects his own son in his pursuit of success, but Baxter Dury later comes to stay with Ian and his groupie girlfriend, receiving well-meaning but patchy parenting. The women in Dury’s life are very much playing supporting roles, in both senses. Though Dury is portrayed as an extremely caring and tender person, there is no concealing his selfishness. His ex-wife and girlfriend are both veterans of dealing with his moods and lifestyle.

If there are criticisms to be made of the film, they are also comments on the arc of a celebrity’s lifespan. The film slows down significantly after the middle point, the peak of Dury’s success, and begins to lose some of its grip once you realise the hits are already done. However this decline is tempered by the brilliant sequence covering Dury’s scornful anthem for the UN Year of the Disabled ‘Spasticus Autisticus’ where he viciously derides the sentimentalizing of his condition. The film could have done with a few more cuts. However it makes for a fun, rude and entertaining night at the cinema with a marvellous central performance and a killer soundtrack. victoria beale