Those Were the Days (2000)
Reviewed by: Chuma on 2000-07-12
Summary: A coming of age and love story with a difference.
After trying to stop his girlfriend being a hostess at a nightclub where he is working, and being beaten for it, a man recognises a childhood acquaintance called Cock, who stops him from being beaten up. As thanks for this, the man remenices with him about a love story that happened seven years earlier with his sister, Gee, when he was 12 and Cock and
his friends where 17.

Gee, her brother and their mother, Sister Chin, move into a high rise estate and the youngest boy meets Cock and his two friends, who are roped into carrying the families possesions up to their flat when Cock falls in love with Gee, who nicknames him Chick after seeing the
chick he is carrying.

Later, Gee calls Cock out as they live opposite and they go into the stairwell to talk where Gee makes friends with him. Later, on the roof of the estate, Gee shows her affection for him by biting him on the shoulder 'I bite you when I'm happy, I bite you
when I'm sad'. In a later incident when Gee is bullied by the boy at the newspaper stand called Tim (I'm not making this up), Cock saves her then sets the boy's stand on fire, for which he is punished and Tim ends up joining Cock and his friends as 'Four Men in a Boat'.

A few years later, when Cock and his friends are teenagers and become the 'ratbags' of the estate, he is still in love with Gee, but it now hurts more when she shows her affection for him (you see his toes clench with pain). What follows is not the usual love, story but
is different from what you would usually expect from this type of movie.

I also liked this movie (thanks to Tom for not telling me everything that happened, even though he saw it last week), it wasn't sickly-sweet as most romantic movies are and was different
enough from the first movie I saw to stand out on it's own.

Rating : Nine bites on the shoulder (9/10)