| 1 | * AdaptationDisplacement: Unless you live in the UK, it's incredibly unlikely you've ever even heard of the novel this movie is based on. |
| 2 | * AudienceAlienatingPremise: ''Absolute Beginners'' is an adaptation of a widely beloved novel that makes numerous controversial changes to the story and relies heavily on intimate knowledge of 1950s sociocultural movements and the historical background behind them. The combination of its handling of the source material and its esoteric plot meant that few were interested in seeing the film. Consequently, it was a critical whipping boy that lost £6.6 million at the box office, acting as one of three {{Creator Killer}}s for Goldcrest Films. On the upside, it eventually got VindicatedByHistory decades later. |
| 3 | * SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: Some great music by Music/DavidBowie (the title song, "That's Motivation"), Music/{{Sade}} ("Killer Blow"), and [[Music/TheKinks Ray Davies]] ("Quiet Life"), among others. The dancing's pretty cool too. |
| 4 | * BigLippedAlligatorMoment: Arguably "That's Motivation". It's bizarre even by this film's standards because it's a DisneyAcidSequence that's way over the top and comes out of nowhere. Though it's a VillainRecruitmentSong that temporarily works on Colin, by that point in the movie he's already well on the road to selling out -- the number that precedes it is even called [[SellOut "Selling Out"]] -- so it isn't vital to the storyline. Moreover, though Vendice Partners turns out to have been one of the hands in the EvilScheme, save for a glimpse of him shortly before the climax he disappears for the rest of the movie (resulting in WhatHappenedToTheMouse). |
| 5 | * HarsherInHindsight: In the film, the BigBad's plot is to hire white supremacists to drive minorities out of Notting Hill, thereby allowing him buy up the tenements cheaply, knock them down, and build luxury apartments in their place. As of 2020, Notting Hill is infamously one of the most gentrified residential areas of London. Looks like TheBadGuyWins after all... |
| 6 | * {{Narm}}: Falls victim to this nearly every time the film gets serious. Highlights include Colin's drug-addled lipsyncing at Dido Lament's party, Flicker singing "Teddy Bear's Picnic" menacingly while he waves a knife around, a witch-doctor calling down a lightning bolt on some thugs at the White City race riot (a real event that caused very real devastation) and any scene with Steven Berkoff's weird Hitler-like character. |
| 7 | * OneSceneWonder: Most of the film's most memorable characters, played by recognizable celebrities to boot, only appear for one or two brief scenes. |
| 8 | * RetroactiveRecognition: A dancer is played by Creator/AndreeBernard, who would later be best known for playing Liz Burton in ''Series/{{Hollyoaks}}''. |
| 9 | * TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Fans of the novel -- which was to England in TheFifties what ''Literature/TheCatcherInTheRye'' was to America during that same time -- were unhappy in how the novel was changed. |
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