It's All Gone Pete Tong film review

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IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG

It's quite possible that we will look back in ten year's time at 'It's All Gone Pete Tong' as something of a minor classic. It's certainly the best spoof of the music scene since This is Spinal Tap and even outdoes Christopher Guest's great, if under-appreciated Waiting For Guffman as an out-and-out hilarious mockumentary. It's also one of the year's biggest surprises, given that the dance music scene is hardly the flavour of the month any more, coupled with the fact that it features an unlikely and extraordinary central performance from Paul Kaye, whose previous cinematic highlight was the execrable Blackball.

Perhaps the film's success lies in its timing, chronicling as it does the last ten years of British dance music and especially the rise of the DJ. It was a period of excess, selfishness and exaggeration, and although there were some good tunes along the way, the hype often outweighed the musical output. This is parodied perfectly in Michael Dowse's film through Frankie Wilde (Kaye), a superstar DJ on the island of Ibiza: a man who can make thousands of people dance all night but who, at the beginning of the film is one of the most awful characters you're ever likely to meet.

Frankie lives in a world where success has more than gone to his head. His tunes are best-sellers and he fills clubs, and in a time where the DJ is king, Frankie is God. The film lovingly depicts his world with flourishing details, but an excess of drugs, fame, women and booze have made Frankie lose touch with reality. As his personal life begins to crumble around him he simply moves on to the next score and the next record, and in short is one arrogant piece of work. It's not often a film is launched on the back of a central character who is so detestable.

But then something happens to Frankie that changes his world and completely alters the tone of the film. Working on a new album with a couple of pretentious Austrian musicians, he begins to go deaf. Not great news for a DJ. What begins as a quiet ringing in his ear one afternoon while watching a football match gradually gets much worse, until he is unable to hear either his new studio work or the music of the decibel-charged clubs in which he makes his living. Thinking himself infallible, he ignores the situation for as long as possible until reality bites.