Review: T2 Trainspotting

Anyone that has read this movie blog (thanks to both of you by the way!) will know how much I was looking forward to this sequel to the era defining Trainspotting set twenty years on from the brilliant original.
With the success and my fondness of the first Trainspotting however, I did approach the sequel with a nervousness and unease that the sequel (like has often been the case) may not measure up well to its predecessor and ruin the whole Trainspotting experience in the process! Well I need not have worried. T2:Trainspotting resumes twenty years on with Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) arriving back in Edinburgh and reuniting with is old mates (in some cases reluctantly) as Danny Boyle takes the viewer on a nostalgic journey through the original and at the same time clearly showing us what the passage of time and life has done to the main characters. "You're a tourist in your own youth" , Sick Boy tells Renton during T2 and that line could apply to us all as we see glimpses of what made the old movie (and what makes this one) so special.
The chief difference here is that some of the lesser known characters like Begbie and Spud are more developed in this movie than in the first Trainspotting and the film is all the richer for it.
It is also quite obvious of the progression in the careers of the main cast and indeed the director, Danny Boyle, as both the acting and production value of this movie are a big step up from the original.
Therein, however, lies the rub, as it was the roughness and raw nature of the first movie that made it the classic that  it was. The lack of the basic and organic feel of the first means that the sequel will never hold that cult status of the first.
Overall though, relief, joy and enjoyment are the primary emotions evoked after sitting through two hours of this more than credible companion piece to the pulsating original.
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