"Wake Up Punk" Review

Why would anyone make a documentary about someone burning old clothes? They would when the clothes were the vintage creations of legendary fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and the arsonist is her son by notorious rock & roll swindler Malcolm McLaren, Joseph Corré, who with her blessing torched an estimated £6,000,000 worth of his punk rock memorabilia archive on a barge on the River Thames. Thus the aimless meandering documentary Wake Up Punk.

Combining footage of Westwood discussing the origins of the pieces that would be put to the torch with weird Oliver Twist-esque scenes of Dickensian ragamuffins discussing politics, there is an air of irony deficiency as a wealthy child of privilege - Corré also co-founded the Agent Provocateur lingerie line - and his mother try to pretend that burning the past will create a better future when there is no future really to be made from mindless destruction of the Old Ways. 

Also, it's pretty darn ironic that they are protesting the ManBearPig hoax and demanding "green energy" (which never includes nuclear for some reason) by SETTING A BUNCH OF STUFF ON FIRE AND RELEASING SMOKE AND CO2!!!! Save the planet, my arse. As opinionated loudmouth Henry Rollins remarked on the event, "Corré and Westwood might think they have taught everyone a lesson in what punk’s all about, but all they did was show off their massive egos and how much they’ve lost the plot. Maybe it was something else, too. Perhaps it was an emotional response to the fact that McLaren cut Corré out of his will. It doesn’t matter now. It’s yesterday’s garbage. Ooh, how punk." Well said, Hank.

 Unless you already know the history of the Sex Pistols, Westwood and McLaren, you won't really learn much from Wake Up Punk other than self-important people seek to make themselves important. The documentary also fails on the most basic level because it wasn't until I looked up Corré's Wikipedia page that I learned this burning took place in 2016. The film is dated 2022 and must've been completed ahead of Westwood's death in December that year for there's no acknowledgement of her passing.

Score: 4/10. Skip it.