As breezy, saccharine coming-of-age movies go, Blinded by the Light is neither a failure nor a resounding triumph. It hits essentially every expected emotional beat, introduces the expected allies and opposition to our protagonist Javed (Viveik Kalra), and even employs fairly tired and on-the-nose dialogue for the duration—all set to a surprisingly limited sampling of Bruce Springsteen's classic hits.
That's not to say that Blinded by the Light is especially hateable; in fact, its drippy charm and overzealous earnestness are more-often-than-not admirable, at the very least. It's a film with little to genuinely dislike, but not much to gravitate toward either. Javed is a particularly difficult latching-on point, because his behavior seems designed to match the demands of the plot; sometimes he's a painfully shy introvert, other times he's tearing up the school campus in his Springsteen cosplay to the tune of Born to Run, like an '80s radio musical... and in between, he's melodramatically brooding through surreal storm sequences in which the lyrics of Springsteen's music dance along the walls of Javed's environment. I'm confident that someone of a similar background to Javed—a Pakistani immigrant teenager being raised in Britain by very Pakistani parents—could find a substantial degree of relatability in his struggles, but I wonder if that connection would mostly be cosmetic.
More elaborately, Blinded by the Light is about Javed's struggle to find his identity as a modern British teen while under the household rule of extremely traditionally Pakistani parents. Their aim is to make sure their son doesn't lose what makes him Pakistani, while Javed's aim is to make sure he finds something he can relate to and identify with (something his Pakistani heritage seemingly can't be for him). Of course, this conflict is exacerbated when Javed's friend Roops (Aaron Phagura), a counter-cultural Pakistani classmate, introduces him to the blue-collar American pinings of Bruce Springsteen, or as Javed's parents dismissively refer to him, "that Jewish man." Javed immediately, almost magically connects to the pain, hope, and desire in Springsteen's lyrics, and that sets in motion an odyssey to hone his writing ability, become more modern/Western, and by that find "himself."
If you love Springsteen, this film might do it for you, though I was shocked at how few of his songs were used, so maybe not. "Born to Run" and a couple of others are even used multiple times, rather than introducing a new one. Frankly, I can't even remember the titular song showing up. Bruce himself does not make a ham-fisted cameo, thankfully; though now that I think about it, that might have been just the over-the-top kick in the pants this movie needed.
In the end, the only things I really took with me from this movie were a few moments of strong acting performances from Kalra, and Javed's father Malik, played by Kulvinder Ghir. I hope to see those two in more (and more interesting) movies in the near future.
If you need a Springsteen fix, take a day road trip and listen to a few of his albums. You'll probably get more out of that than Blinded by the Light.