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It's All Gone Pete Tong
Inaccurately billed as a comedy, It's All Gone Pete Tong is the difficult tale of mad-for-it Ibiza DJ Frankie Wilde as he struggles to handle the relentless onslaught of deafness. The trailer suggests it's a cross between 24 Hour Party People and Blackball, but don't believe that for a moment, this is a story of one man's battle to deal with an ironic roll of the dice.
The rating I've given seems harsh - I feel like it deserves higher - but I really wanted it to be funnier having seen the trailer, and I think the subject matter will put off most of the public - so whilst it may be a fine film for the right audience, the ratings here will, I think, reflect the majority. It's an admirable and largely enjoyable story, but its limited demographic will relegate it to cult-only status. I enjoyed this film: I think the average moviegoer will enjoy it: Testosterone Satisfaction Rating: Brit-lad culture, more cocaine than you could snort in a lifetime and the odd pair of beach boobs. To enjoy this film you should: appreciate that it's not what the trailer says it is.
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Not that there aren't comic moments - Paul Kaye (previously seen in Blackball, Two Thousand Acres of Sky and originally
as red carpet vulture Dennis Pennis) generates a few chuckles with his googly-eyed look-at-me brash
and brazen Brit routine. As the deafness ensues and the narcotic abuse escalates, the strain on Kaye's acting skills
begins to show. He does a fine job, but his limited range is exposed with an excess of staring into space with the
odd eye twitch for good measure. In a way this contributes, because it lends a sense of drowning to otherwise
super-confident Frankie Wilde. Someone more mainstream - say Daniel Craig from
Peppered within the main thread and helping to validate the apparent truth of the story, a series of real-life DJs
including Carl Cox,
Charlie Chester, Paul van Dyk and Fatboy Slim (under the moniker Lol Hammond) appear as talking heads in the vox pop style
commonly used in non-fiction TV shows, and Pete Tong himself turns up in an early cameo, playing himself interviewing
a buzzy Wilde before the onset of his difficulties. You don't need to know who these guys are to understand
what's going on - but I would suggest that if you're not familiar with the "It's All Gone Pete Tong" phrase,
then much of the 'avin'-it-large culture will
probably be lost on you too. This will limit the audience somewhat, because to appreciate it you have to be familiar
with club culture and also want a personal tale of adversity - a combination not found in a massive portion of the
cinema-going audience. Throw in the Coke Badger - an imaginary furry demon who haunts Wilde while he's trying to
kick the white powder - and we have a film more suited to the fringe festivals than the mainstream, a little like
Donnie Darko (though it may just be the six-foot imaginary talking mammals that led me there).
