Big hair, tiny shorts and some of the catchiest songs of the 80s: Wham! were, deservedly, a pop phenomenon. But, as this suitably perky archive documentary account of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s stellar trajectory reveals, much of the music press at the time dismissed them as himbo dimwits: plenty of Studio Line hairspray and burnished mahogany tans, but little in the way of substance. It hurt – archive interview audio from Michael hints that the sting from this lack of early acknowledgment persisted throughout his career. But the beauty of Wham!, a key part of the appeal of the band, came from the perception that they were a self-contained unit, a guaranteed good time seemingly impervious to negativity. And for a while, that was true: the film, which creates a dialogue between recent interviews with Ridgeley and older archive recordings of Michael, pays tribute to the close bond between the two Bushey Meads school friends who found themselves living the dream. But it also explores the cost to the then closeted Michael of the teen heart-throb persona he was forced to wear along with his canary-yellow Fila tennis shorts.
In cinemas 28 June, Netflix 5 July
