Michael Apted was only a subordinate member of the filmmaking team that interviewed fourteen British seven-year-olds of varied backgrounds for a 1963 Granada Television program called 7 Up, but it was he who thought to keep up with the group thereafter, tracking them down and shooting them at seven-year intervals through 1984. The results are a bit like septennial class reunions — only the alumni do not physically get back together in any place but in the film can. The structure of the piece, with each member of the "class" taken one at a time (or in two cases, three at a time) and gotten out of the way, doesn't promote a reunion ambience. It is too disjointed for that. But then, these people were never really in the same "class" at all — very much to the contrary, and very much to the point. And it is only the filmmakers (and the audience, over their shoulders) who are privileged to interact with, and circulate among, them all. The results, too, are a bit like home movies and family photo albums (with the earliest documentation in antique black-and-white), and in similar fashion are full of the inherent poignancy of change. Of course, twenty-eight is still very young, and the movie is far from the full or final word, but it nonetheless addresses that question that so often hangs in the air even after a story has been told: What then? In this sense, 28 Up, whatever else it is, is the quintessential sequel; or more accurately, a sequel and its predecessor rolled into one; or still more accurately, three sequels and their predecessors rolled into one. It is, if not utterly unique, near enough to make no difference. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd