24 Hour Party People (2002)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Powerful

Fresh and Exciting

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I watched this movie twice in the cinema and enjoyed it very much. Not a strange thing because I'm totally into the music of that period and the bands from Manchester pictured in the movie. Now I have watched it at home and feel slightly disappointed by it. Some lesser aspects of this film were made clear to me. The whole film is very fragmented and an almost 15 years are tried to put into one story. And that story handles punk, new wave, indie, baggy and rave, all different subcultures.Then there's the main character Tony Wilson (well acted by Steve Coogan) who tells us that this movie "Is not about Tony Wilson". Well the movie is in fact about Tony Wilson and not about the music, the musicians or the scene. Of course Wilson played a pivotal role in creating the Manchester scene with his Factory label and the Hacienda club. But think about this: of the six legendary bands that came out of Manchester in the period of '75-'95 only two (Joy Division/New Order and the Happy Mondays) were on the Factory label. Oke, he was too late for the Buzzc***s and too early for Oasis but he rejected the Smiths and he hated the Stone Roses. In fact these two bands who were the leading groups of their time are only mentioned once or shown for just a split second. The reason of course is that this film is about Tony Wilson and we must not get under the impression that this almost god missed two legendary bands for the label he ruined personally. But 24 Hour Party People is not completely a glorification of Mr. Wilson. He is often portrayed as a complete t**t which give some relieve and humor during the "I have been such an important person for the development of music in my period" scenes. And there are the scenes when you see Tony as a reporter for Granada Television. These scenes are relatively funny but they also draw you away from the real story.So what is still good about 24 Hour Party People? Michael Winterbottom manages to show the zeitgeist of a very interesting period in rock and dance music. His film is very hip and very funny, but also sad. Especially when you see the decline of a very talented man like Martin Hannett. Of course the suicide of Ian Curtis is also a very sad moment but unless you have some knowledge of Joy Division (which most viewers will have I assume) you are left wandering why the hell this guy hangs himself. And that is probably the main problem that Winterbottom didn't solve. Unless you followed the music scene during these years or you have read about it the story is hard to follow. And you wonder what was so unique about this period in rock music and about the main characters pictured here (Curtis, Hannett, Ryder). Winterbottom managed to get a great ensemble of actors together here. Sean Harris gives the best portrait of Ian Curtis I have seen so far and Andy Serkis is great as Martin Hannett. It is my opinion that Danny Cunningham is less convincing as Shaun Ryder, but he is probably impossible to play.So in my own chair and with a partner without knowledge of the music scene in Manchester the flaws in this movie were clear. But still the hipness, humor and acting skills attracts.

I was told it had to be a good movie. I nearly forced myself to watch it till the end, and yet, I skipped some moments due to one and relentless feature of this awful film - boredom. This is probably The worst movie I ever saw in many years. Everything seems to be wrong here. The casting is wrong, as actors seem to be only delivering their cues obviously lacking soul and gusto. The light - this sick sepia tone and frequent colored glitches really make dizzy and vomiting. The plot is a meandering endless talk of the main hero, not interesting in a split second. Even the music - nay, it has no cohesion here, and only Wrote For Luck by Happy Mondays is OK. The film was supposed to be about bands? Nay, I saw no real bands - just a mish-mash of some trite clichés, awful concert cues, millions of 4-letter invectives and silly sex scenes. The Factory records? It never was depicted nice, too. Just a scanty account of some dialogs, shaky camera fights, more bad words and more booze. Well, I would not like to be in such Britain as in the film. I trued as hard as I could to follow. Hopeless. Meaningless trash, coarse language, endless talks, blurred camera work, very hazy plot and very slow development. Just bad. Skip it

You would think that Hollywood and the music business would be very close, with the executives lunching together every day in the slick restaurant scene that only LA and New York City have to offer. But you would be wrong. The evidence is that on both sides (music execs trying to make movies and tone deaf Hollywood moguls)there has been a massive failure in joining the two art forms. The one big exception is the growing body of work by Scorcese. Which brings me to this film, one of the top music movies ever made. For those of us who have followed music since the birth of rock n roll, it is particularly amazing and satisfying that it took the British to make this masterpiece about the BUSINESS of rock. Since Edison, it is a combination of business and technology that has created the music industry and led to its massive melt down, and the complete hand over to Apple. But that is another story. This film does its best to sum up why and how it has been impossible for rock and roll artists to grow their art separate from a completely insane and out of control money system that sold it down the river. The setting of this film is in the brief but fascinating Manchester music scene and this is the perfect back drop for a goofy, chaotic, and ultimately tragic tale that just never stops moving. Steve Coogan is brilliant in a once in a life time role that must have been written just for him. How else can you explain this funny, hilarious, and absolutely true picture of a music money man gone mad. I am not exaggerating that when movies were invented, they were meant for just this; social and artistic commentary that is moving, funny and absolutely unforgettable. I have seen this movie more than once, and each time I am amazed, delighted and so sad that a artistic world once so promising came to this.

It would be unfair to dismiss "24 Hour Party People" as a biographical look at Tony Wilson. It's so much more. It's a celebration of music, of a lifestyle, of a bygone era. It also plays like a Greek tragedy, albeit substantially more fun, but there is no shortage of darkness and tragedy in the film. The shifts in tone are particularly remarkable, as the film veers from its usual dry, sardonic tone into real pathos and examination of the dark side of almost any phenomenal success.I'm not completely nuts. I'm not going to claim that "24 Hour Party People" is a visual masterpiece, or a film which achieves more with its characters than most accepted 'masterpieces' of cinema when it comes to depth. I'm not going to argue that it feels as complete an artistic achievement as one of the better films by a cinematic 'master'. Wait, what am I talking about? That's exactly what I'm going to argue. "24 Hour Party People" is as perfect as a film can get, not because it achieves the visual perfection of one of Kubrick's finer films, not because it marks a turning point in cinema history, but because it sets out to be exactly what it ends up being- a hilarious, darkly satirical and yet affectionate look at one of the biggest 'scenes' in music history, some of the best bands, and the man behind it all, Tony Wilson. A minor player in his own life story. This is one of the most purely enjoyable films ever made. It all unfolds with a sort of inspired madness. The very first scene shows the charismatic, arrogant, and somewhat self-important Tony Wilson hang-gliding for a television report, then turning to the camera after that's over with and saying "You're going to see a lot more of that sort of thing in the film. I don't want to say too much, don't want to spoil it. I'll just say one word: 'Icarus'. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more." It's not only a terrific line, indicative of the sort of dry wit much of the dialogue achieves, but also telling of what the film is going to be like. J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader was one of the less infatuated major critics with the film (but still gave it a definitely positive review, which should give you some indication of just how well-received this film was by critics), and labeled Coogan's Wilson a a pedantic narrator, describing his story as having little narrative momentum of its own. I like to think that's sort of the point, and Wilson himself makes a point to mention in the film that it's not a film about him. The highlight of the film, arguably even more than Frank Cottrell Boyce's screenplay, is Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson. As everyone reading this probably knows, Coogan based his famed Alan Partridge character on Tony Wilson's career as a television reporter, so he's really playing a variation on Alan Partridge here. What's amazing about Coogan's performance is that he manages to draw even this Partridge fan into Tony Wilson's world so much that I didn't care about any similarity. It's still a stunning comic performance, and excellent during the darker, more serious scenes in the film as well. I'd go as far as saying that it's one of the best male performances of the decade. The rest of the cast is too large to go through one by one, but everyone is excellent here, some going for a sort of slightly altered impersonation of the real-life person they're playing, some creating their own version. A point of criticism often aimed at "24 Hour Party People" is inaccuracy. The film is gleefully inaccurate, and I fail to see how that's a problem. We didn't need a pedantic, touch-on-all-bases film about Factory Records, because Factory Records would never have made such a movie had they ventured into film production. This is exactly the sort of loose-knit and yet tightly-written film that is needed to capture the energy of the music and the movement. Boyce's screenplay goes through dozens of characters, none of which don't feel real, it's got enough pompous and arrogant philosophizing to turn off even the worst pseudo-intellectual, but it makes it work simply because it's got a sort of self-mocking sense of humor. The points Wilson makes by referencing history and philosophy are valid, but it would be at odds with the sort of film this is if they weren't written with the wry wit the rest of the film is, and if they weren't delivered so wonderfully by Coogan. The film is shot on video, and uses a hand-held style which far from inhibiting the film as it arguably does with some other Winterbottom films, just suits it perfectly. That doesn't mean there aren't some scenes which are explosively extravagant visually, because there are, and they are beautiful. "24 Hour Party People" feels like a complete artistic achievement. It captures the energy of the music, the feel of it, the basis for the movement so well, but also succeeds at providing a well-told summary of the story of Factory Records, the Hacienda, and Tony Wilson. As far as I'm concerned it's one of the most enjoyable films ever made, and one of the most consistently successful. I don't think there's anything here that falls flat, it's all quite brilliant, from the first scene to the final shot. 10/10