It's All Gone Pete Tong Review

Yep, we've already reviewed this one once but Mark Mann just sent in another solid piece on the film that I though was worth sharing. Mark will also be reviewing a healthy number of Fantasia Festival titles for us so here's your first chance to get to know the lad.

The cult-hit Fubar by writer and director Michael Dowse is about a small-town headbanger who loses one of his testicles to cancer. Dowse's new movie It's All Gone Pete Tong is about a popular Ibiza DJ who loses his hearing. In a recent interview, Dowse hinted that the upcoming sequel to Fubar may be about the same headbanger losing his other testicle. He's a good filmmaker, but one thing is certain: no one will ever accuse Dowse's films of being too high-concept.

Dowse has definitely established a unique and surprisingly effective formula for himself, but it is nevertheless just a formula: one part ironic situational comedy and two parts mockumentary. His films don't have plots, they have conceits. He makes feature-length one-liners, and all else beyond the simple synopsis – loser loses testicle, DJ loses hearing – is aimless elaboration of the joke.

That being said, simplicity is not a fault, and if it works it works. Fubar definitely worked, in large part due to the brilliancy of the acting. Actors Paul Spence and David Lawrence apparently spent three months before the shoot in rural Alberta, 'living the life': shot-gunning cans of Bud down by the river, preening their mullets, and stealing road signs. The result was hilariously authentic acting, far funnier than any Christopher Guest movie and without the latent sneering.

In It's All Gone Pete Tong, Dowse's approach in terms of structure is basically identical to what he did for Fubar, only with a lot more money. The thing that makes the difference, however, is British spoof-comedy actor Paul Kaye, who takes the film in an unexpected direction. Kaye's portrayal of legendary DJ Frankie Wilde brings to the mix a jarringly different strain of comedy: it is absurdist, cynical and excessive… essentially, more British. Fubar was funny in large part because it seemed realistic, and because it wasn't tainted by scorn, as with most mockumentaries. The jeering was playful, even sympathetic. This sort of bemused heckling was largely absent in It's All Gone, and instead it was replaced entirely by Paul Kaye's sarcastic dynamism.

Paul Kaye's acting could be described as liquid: he is an impressive facial contortionist, he successfully ad-libbed in many parts of the film, and he looks perpetually moist. I lost track of the number of times the camera caught him trailing snot into his mustache. Kaye splashed through all of the open spaces left by Dowse's plotlessness, filling them with his hallucinatory rants and sweaty physical comedy.

Weird as it is to say, Fubar was successful because of the universality of headbangers, at least for North Americans. It's a type we all understand, so it's funny to see it rendered well (feel free to not identify with this claim). It's All Gone, on the other hand, satirizes the wildly decadent, coke-addled, ultra-cool elite. Very few members of the audience will be shaking their heads during the film, remembering their days of over-sexed rockstardom in Spain. It's still funny in the way Spinal Tap was funny, and Paul Kaye manages to make us feel like we're in on the joke, but it can't and doesn't draw the viewer into the film in the way that Fubar did.

Separately, Michael Dowse and Paul Kaye each have a certain brilliance. Dowse's lies in the clever simplicity of his ideas and the perfectionism with which he renders them; Paul Kaye's lies in his ability to appropriate his Monty Python heritage and still feel fresh, contemporary. Together, Paul Kaye shines, but the movie itself feels disjointed. If Dowse wanted to develop his films beyond the skeletal simplicity of Fubar, he should have started with hiring a good writer, not just a good actor to toy around with his funny ideas. Interestingly, they did not see each other's earlier work until after the film was finished, and apparently they both hated what they saw. The conflict of their opposing sensibilities prevented them from creating a lastingly funny and interesting film, of which Dowse is certainly capable. Instead, they made a film that is sporadically chuckle-worthy and mostly irrelevant.

Reviewed by Mark Mann.