Oh, baby, this town rips the bones from your backвЂ¦ Javed is positively primed, then, when a new school pal, Roops (Aaron Phagura), introduces him to the blue-collar wisdom of Bruce Springsteen.

In 1987, when sensitive, creative 16-year-old Javed (Viveik Kalra) is trying to escape its suffocating suburbanity, its then-great claim to fame, as home to a Vauxhall automobile factory, is primarily notable to him when his Pakistani-immigrant dad, Malik (Kulvinder Ghir: Gone Too Far!, Bend It Like Beckham), is laid off after a long tenure working there. Luton, England, a working-class town north of London, may today be best known as the location of one of the greater-London-area airports. We donвЂ™t need it sugarcoated, and weвЂ™ve never expected or wanted that. We Xers may never get any decent retro reminiscence, what with everything that was once awful turning up new again these days, but hey, thatвЂ™s just reality. That might be a tad depressing, but it is at least authentic. Among all the feel-good danceableness here in the joy and the solace and the sense of being seen that pop music can bring, thereвЂ™s a reminder for those of us who were teens in the 1980s - *waves hello* - that some important stuff really has not changed much since we were kids, despite that brief respite we got in the postвЂ“Cold War, preвЂ“9/11 1990s.

There is a comforting familiarity for this GenXer in Blinded by the Light, but I also welcome the hearty rejection of the idea that nostalgia is universally a positive thing. Disaffected misfit teen saved by rock вЂ™nвЂ™ roll? Woo-hoo! ItвЂ™s a tale as old as timeвЂ¦ or at least as old as, what, 1955? (This one is set in 1987.) Is this ever not good stuff? Is this ever not a story that most weirdos who came of age in the late 20th century can identify with?

Rotten tomatoes blinded by the light