The Kids Are Alright, the cinematic equivalent of an authorised biography, is both monumental and fair evidence of the contradictions that have kept the Who going for nearly two decades: a mixture of the pretentious and the down-to-earth which was best summarised on their album cover "Who's Next?" which showed the band pissing against a monolith.

The film traces the band's development from deliberately remedial beginnings—the stutterings of "My Generation," the inarticulateness of "Can't Explain"—through "cultural" acceptance—Townshend talking fluently with Melvyn Bragg—to the fluid laser spectaculars of the Seventies shows.

If the band's mental development has always rested with Townshend's attempts to talk seriously about rock music and to display a conscience which he alone appears to possess among his contemporaries, its physical development can be seen wholly in terms of Daltrey's emerging self-confidence with the discovery of his own torso.

The film is...