24 Hour Party People (2002)

So Alan Partridge was based upon Tony Wilson ? I always genuinely believed that Coogan's legendary comedy character was based on Richard Madeley but watching the real Tony Wilson's pretentious egotistical and painfully insincere conversations on television I suppose there is a bit of Wilson in Partridge - Or is the fact that Coogan plays Wilson in this biographical movie something that prejudices my view ? Come to think of it Wilson's body language and hand gestures remind me far more of Tony Blair than anyone else . I digress

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE is a highly self indulgent mockumentary film centered on the creation of Manchester based Factory Records . Highly self indulgent in the way it brings to the narrative things that only the real life characters know or give a toss about . Things like the real life Howard DeVoto ( It's okay I've never heard of him either ) addressing the camera and saying " I can't remember that bit " . That's nice to know Howard because Western Civilisation was resting on this part of the plot - If not the entire movie . I'm sure we can all rest easy in our beds knowing the truth and I look forward to the sequel PEOPLE TONY Wilson KNOWS AND THEIR HOME MOVIES

Two things make the movie worth watching for me ...

1 ) The eclectic cast featuring people as diverse as Andy Serkis , Christopher Ecclestone , Peter Kay and Jack Duckworth's son

2 ) The soundtrack . Most especially Joy Division , a band that was (in)famous for its bleak , nihilistic tones and the bizarre on stage antics of Ian Curtis and praise too for Sean Harris who captures Curtis's mannerism perfectly

But unless you've enjoyed the music of at least one Manchester band be it Joy Division , New Order or The Happy Mondays you might not want to join this party

Fmovies: There's more to this than meets the eye.

You may like it simply for the music. Superficially, it is a one of those things unsuitably called a "docudrama," a category that I don't quite understand.

But here's the way it is constructed. We have a fellow whose job is to show viewers around odd and interesting things. He's a character who takes on a metarole in the film as our guide, sometimes within the movie and sometimes stepping out of it and speaking directly to us, using several modes.

And the subject of this carefully folded structure? Anarchism. Music as anarchy, as specifically breaking the musical equivalent of narrative. I'm not sure that anyone can honestly like this music without making the commitment themselves. Otherwise, its a sort of perverse voyeurism, but I guess that's what drives the music business.

Winterbottom isn't a halfway kinda guy though, and you should be inclined to share anything he serves up. Here, he is back in the German new wave mode, where there is no story at all. No arc, no climax. Each event just sort of falls into the next. The camera (which takes the role of the watcher within, Tony, and the watcher without) similarly falls. To underscore this, Winterbottom has Ian Curtis hang himself in front of a TeeVee. On that is playing Herzog's Stroszek, dancing chicken and the amuck truck. Its Herzog's film with the same attitude: no narrative, a loss of narrative is the narrative or where the hole is.

After that death, incidentally, is one of the most haunting images I've seen. I do not think it is taken from another film. Children in Klan suits, some black, parade in a highly stylized 2d shot, then one carries a huge, erect Klan hat on a false color beach and tumbles.

You might consider this the male lover of "9 Songs." I do.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

As I am a big fan of the bands who secured the glory of Factory Records, especially Joy Division and Durutti Column, I was quite impatient to discover "24 Hour Party People". I watched it last night and the first thing i will say will be the following one: how disappointed I was! The scriptwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce and especially the director Michael Winterbottom did a really bad work and I will try to explain why.

For me "24 Hour Party People" is an enjoyable movie to listen to, mainly thanks to the music. Someone has written on this site that you had to be British to appreciate the music. Not necessarily. I am myself French and I love most of the bands who signed for Factory Records. Obviously, you have to like this time (English independent music of the eighties), this culture. That said, these bands aren't very known in France where they remain at the stage of cult-bands. Michael Winterbottom's flick was apparently successful in Great-Britain, but in France it was belatedly launched (on the 4th June 2003) and it went unnoticed. But the main problem is that "24 Hour Party People" is, visually an exhausting movie to watch. I must say that I don't appreciate very much the making adopted by Winterbottom. There's an amateurish side, reinforced by a granular and quite dirty photography in his way of filming that I highly disapprove. It seems that his camera can't stand still even in the quietest moments. On another hand, when the movie arrives at the end of the eighties (the golden age for Manchester), as if he wanted to recreate the crazy atmosphere of the town in 1989-1990, he didn't skimp on the flashy effects which ends up annoying the spectator. Then, Winterbottom must have been influenced by "Trainspotting" (1996) because in his directing, we can sometimes detect a video clip side.

To go on, the authors of the movie seem to have forgotten one important thing. Factory Records wasn't only limited to Joy Division and the Happy Mondays. There was also Durutti Column and New Order. All right, the movie doesn't forget them but you can only see them for a few minutes. Given that, the film nearly skips the mid-eighties and quite obviously Joy Division and the Happy Mondays's careers especially interested the authors. Due to this, you can easily separate the movie in two parts. The first one mainly focuses on Joy Division while the second involves mostly the Happy Mondays. This characteristic is confirmed with the cover of the original soundtrack which depicts Tony Wilson (of course) but also Ian Curtis and Shaun Ryder. By way of consolation, we can object that Winterbottom had intuition for the cast because the actors he hired to play the musicians are very true to life, especially the ones in the roles of Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner. Furthermore, the actor who acts Martin Hannett is very convincing in the shameless personality of this extraordinary producer.

Tony Wilson's voice-off is necessary to guide us through the most important stages. So as to give the spectator interest in the film, it can also be a good thing to make Wilson directly speak to the camera to make us share his feelings, his thoughts on Manchester, the music. So long as this idea doesn't overload the movie and I have unfortunately this impression. Winterbottom and Boyce should have restrained these too frequent apparitions.

The screenplay retained the most outstanding moments in the history of Tony Wilson and Factory Records but it doesn't st

24 Hour Party People fmovies. I was mislead by the trailers of '24 Hour Party People' have been very misleading. I thought it would be another 'Trainspotting' type movie about party animals. However, it's something different, something better. Though many have compared it to the likes of 'Studio 54' (Lord knows why), '24 Hour Party People' is a far better made and more effective film. Based on a true story, it takes place during the time when punk rock was subsiding and new kinds of music were born in England. Shot with a digital camera, in documentary style with some use of live footage and narrated by Tony Wilson, (who leads a double life as a TV reporter and music producer), Michael Winterbottom takes us into the rave culture in Manchester, that of sex, drugs and rock and roll. We see it all from Wilson's point of view and we are amused by the layers of his character. Coogan breathes life into Tony Wilson and brings an excellent humour in his portrayal. Paddy Considine and Shirley Henderson stand out too. Pretty much all the performances appear authentic. Watch out for cameos by Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg and Marsha Thomason and by real bandmembers. The portrayal of the Manchester culture, the scenes inside the club and the bands look very real. Winterbottom infuses loads of energy and craze to 'seduce' the viewer. He cleverly injects dry humour which only supports that this is more than just a documentary-like movie. The soundtrack is a must-have and for those who love movies about music, this is a must see.

24 Hour Party People is just one of those movies that has that click with the subject matter. The actual style of the film corresponds with the music, the irreverence, and the energy of it all. But there's more than just the unconventionality of the script and direction; the film has that sort of stream-of-thought, wry, distinct British humor to it, and a sincerity beneath the absurdist parts. It follows its main character down the line, in a surreal way like a documentary, if that makes sense- we move between Tony Wilson addressing the audience (played by Steve Coogan, who is so on target with the honesty of the portrayal you can't picture anyone else in the role), an almost behind-the-scenes filming of it (I think), and a dramatization shot on pure digital, independent vibes.

Wilson, who sees the Sex Pistols play in Manchester (his hometown, and the main base and heart in the location of this film), is also a journalist on television. He gets so enamored with what he sees as an extremely important part of history (the viewer will get a good idea of this), he gets involved with the bands, the locals, and goes from just bands, to maintaining the Hacienda, a club. Some parts of the film one might expect, if considering it includes the rise and fall of fame (or rather, in this film, a lot of times in the mind), and the drug scene coinciding with the music. One knows that Tony Wilson is the main character, the protagonist, basically in every scene, but somehow he does not become the only important part of the film's success. The music too is a huge factor, and the speed it sets for a movie like this.

As much biography as musical, 24 Hour Party People brings to light the scene of Manchester as a history lesson, but an entertaining one to boot. Bands like New Order (the form after Joy Division split) will be known to most who follow music, but unless if you're not really steeped in the new-wave/dance scene of the 80's and 90's, some of the bands may sound totally unfamiliar. Still, this is not an automatic deterrent- the music is what it is, and most who will want to see the film will know what they're getting (in truth, the ratio of British punk and new-wave vs. electronica is fairly balanced). But even when some of the music doesn't stand the test of time, it serves the story all the same (some of the more interesting and darkly funny scenes are when no one comes to the club the sort of 'mix-way' between the two musical eras).

And all through this, Coogan plays it like a pro. The Coogan Wilson, of course, is far from the real Tony Wilson (one of the DVD interviews says he's a 'Jerry Springer'-looking type), so it becomes more of being a character in this whole environment that springs up around and by him. In a way he's kind of like a British Andy Warhol with the idealistic, serious journalist instead of the painter/filmmaker. There's a sort of checked insanity that underlays some of his performance, and yet for most of the time, like a lot of the better British actors, he doesn't play it more for laughs than he needs, and when serious drama/tragedy comes up it's still kept to this reality. So, along with him, and the music, and the strange form of putting together a dramatized, documentary/musical/black comedy by director Michael Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, it all gels. This is one of the finest sleepers I've seen in a while.

Like any other movie about rock music, documentary or not, '24 Hour Party People' packs its fair share of inside material and self-indulgent frivolity.

Due to a crammed timeframe of 20 years (essentially one big juggling act of people, bands and events) connecting all the dots required multiple viewings, even if I had certain prior knowledge of the Manchester music scene in the late '70s, '80s and the early '90s. Making matters still more difficult is the variety of extremely thick accents - to a point of entire sections of dialogue or monologue occasionally flying by with only a single word or two actually registering with me. While it added to film's authenticity, that got to be more than a bit annoying after a while. Where's that closed captioned TV set when you desperately need it?

As far as the treatment of the subjects themselves goes, the movie does an adequate job. I mean, when it gets right down to it, the only structure such a film can more-or-less follow is the basic listing of a series of real events (and in this particular case most of them already well documented). Naturally, as such it doesn't allow for a whole lot of substantial artistic freedom so the director employs many little asides, winks and nudges by our narrator Tony Wilson (often through the 'fourth wall') as well as visual tricks and, obviously, music to make this different from, say, something you might see on VH1's 'Behind the Music'. In addition to being one of the major driving forces behind the whole scene, Tony also held a full-time job at Granada TV all throughout this period, which the movie uses skillfully for comic relief.

Predictably (not that I'm complaining), things like: Ian Curtis' suicide, the opening of the Haçienda club, ascent and demise of Factory Records, Shaun Ryder's famously out-of-control & self destructive shenanigans, all receive special treatment. Through Steve Coogan's excellent performance, Tony Wilson, our guide through this zoo, comes off as a pretty fascinating fellow. Director Michael Winterbottom makes a wise choice in leaving out many details from his private life in favour of the music itself and the people who created it. Wilson's second wife and kids, for example, are barely mentioned - with a cheeky remark about Tony being a minor character in his own life story as an explanation for the lack of on-screen time devoted to them.

In the end, whether or not you enjoy '24 Hour Party People' will largely, if not entirely, depend on your level of familiarity or appreciation of the bands like Joy Division, New Order, The Happy Mondays and to a lesser extent of their punk inspirations and predecessors like The Stranglers, The Jam, Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Siouxsie and the Banshees, who are also depicted in the film.

Personally, even though I was always aware of the British new wave, most of its music & 'shtick' pretty much slipped under my radar so I recently started discovering it retroactively. Therefore, it was a blast to see a well-done, interesting film celebrating that era in popular music. These blokes created & performed honest, full-blooded, passionate tunes, which is the single most important thing that comes through the movie.

P.S: The Smiths, another famous and influential Manchester band are notably absent from much of the film. This is probably due to the fact that back in 1983 both Tony and New Order producer/manager Rob Gretton agreed their demo was c