Spud

1990, South Africa. Mandela has just been released and the country is changing. John Milton is thirteen and arrives on a scholarship at an old, strict boarding school. The other boys in the dormitory call him Spud. There is caning, first adolescence, terrible food, and the English teacher known as the Guv: sardonic, drinking, and the only real teacher there. Donovan Marsh directs. The source is John van de Ruit's bestselling South African novel. Troye Sivan plays Spud and John Cleese plays the teacher. The background is the change in the country. Apartheid is coming apart and the school is trying to stay outside it entirely; the narrative does not argue about it and it is visible in every scene. The shape is a boarding school comedy and familiar: the dormitory of eight, the types, the pranks, and a teacher discovering a boy. John Cleese's character is the best thing in it and most of the lines are given to him. Troye Sivan was a child actor at the time and later became known as a musician. It did large business in South Africa and two sequels followed. Its weakness is density; the novel is heavily episodic and in trying to fit all of it the film leaves some strands unfinished. Who it is for: anyone curious about boarding school stories and South African cinema. Who it is not for: the humour is conventional, the question of race is left in the background, and most characters exist on a single trait.