Mawkish 'Blinded By The Light' Wears Its Too-Hungry Heart On Its Sleeve

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"

That's a line from the title track of Bruce Springsteen's 1980 album The River, one of several Boss-tic Gospels quoted more than once in Gurinder Chadha's Blinded by the Light, a relentlessly upbeat coming-of-age dramedy that borrows its title from a different Springsteen song. But the question posed by the film is a less poetic one: Can a movie be forgiven its abundance of mawkish cliches and awkward form if its story is more or less true, its performances are warm and compelling, and the uplift it aims to provide is desperately needed?

This may be more of a personality inventory than the sort of or or even are Springsteen's most profound works, you'll likely find too syrupy for your black-coffee palette.