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Music writer Neil McCormick’s wry memoir about growing up in former schoolmate Bono’s shadow reaches the screen with some of its charm intact.

Sadly, it also comes with preposterous embellishments – a criminal subplot here, an assassination attempt there – and a lily-livered eagerness to depict Bono as the nicest singer ever to walk the earth.

Ben Barnes (aka Prince Caspian) brings gusto and a plausible Irish brogue to McCormick’s alter-ego, a hapless rock wannabe who embroils his brother (Robert Sheehan) in an ill-starred quest to rival U2.

Like the late Pete Postlethwaite’s cameo (his final screen credit), alas, the messy, patchy and overlong result elicits more rueful sadness than side-splitting hilarity.

Neil Smith is a freelance film critic and writer who contributes regularly to Heat, SFX and Screen International. He's a long-time member of the London Film Critics’ Circle and was a contributing editor at Total Film for many years.