Killing Bono review

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.