Nodding to the rhythm of a hip hop soundtrack, Life 'N' Lyrics is, beneath a pretty veneer, drenched in age old moral messages. The film is a rather sugar coated portrait of black working-class life framed loosely around Shakespeare's tragedy, with a sickly sweet and achingly predictable conclusion. In Life 'N' Lyrics plump and jovial grannies wear brightly coloured tea cosy hats while wheeling their shopping baskets around the estates, and London is a place where the sun sets and rises daily with a beautiful pinkish glow lighting up tranquil council blocks. Laxton and his team have chosen to avoid a bleaker, and perhaps more realistic, representation of life on London's estates, and whether this is a good or bad decision is down to personal preference. But their life-affirming story of hope and following one's dreams is by its own merits a success, and certainly does everything it says on the tin.

Ashley Walters, aka Asher D, (Bullet Boy, Stormbreaker) was given the script while still in production of Saul Dibb’s Bullet Boy, the film that made the ex-So Solid Crew member part of a new breed of hot, young British talent in 2004. He plays our modern Romeo, Danny DJ Biz from The Motion Crew. Danny wants to produce his own music and make something of his life, but the mentality of "good things don't happen to people like us" that rings somewhat unconvincingly around this particular estate hinders him . He'd rather hang out with his crew and challenge the Hard Cash gang to midnight MC battles than pluck up the courage to follow his dreams. Things get no easier when, in the run up to the MIC Masters Competition, he falls for the beautiful Carmen (Louise Rose), a singer from the rival crew.

Danny and Carmen steadily realise that the worlds they inhabit are very different. Danny states with dread that his new girlfriend is "an HMV, Virgin Megastore type". Her affluent parents' leafy, suburban home is a far cry from life on the estate, and, when their affair begins to challenge Danny's relationships with his crew, all hell breaks loose and their love is deemed an impossibility. "Blood", after all "is blood".

It is by no means the next Bullet Boy, but does retain some integrity in the nature of the lives it explores on screen by employing a sub-plot through a character aptly named Fable; giving the film a little more depth and balancing out its frustratingly formulaic structure. In the end Life 'N' Lyrics follows a pattern the true cinephile may find tedious, but even so this is a slice of entertainment that ticks all the right boxes.

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