The likes of Kidulthood and Shank started a new wave of films about urban British teens. Now the genre is getting its first spoof. So has it truly come of age?
There's no surer sign that a film style has matured into a fully-grown genre than when the first parody comes out. That bittersweet moment has arrived for British urban films in the shape of Anuvahood. This brashly coloured council estate jaunt follows a deluded sad case named "K" who fancies himself as a MC-turned-drug dealer, but lacks the nous to pull it off. Marketed as the UK's answer to US urban comedies such as Friday (1995) and House Party (1990), the title is also an obvious pastiche of Noel Clarke's Kidulthood, the 2006 film that gave rise to a slew of imitators. It's a ballsy move, especially considering co-writer, co-director and star Adam Deacon got his own break playing comic relief Jay in Kidulthood and its 2008 follow-up, Adulthood.
Deacon, a 27-year-old whose slight build allows him to pass for the teenage hoodlums he plays, is keen to emphasise that Anuvahood is more homage than parody: "For me it was about being thankful." Yet his film was obviously also born of a frustration with the limits of the Kidulthood mould. "I can't tell you how many scripts I've read where it's just about violence on London streets. You can't keep doing that – you can't."
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