Director: Michael Dowse
Starring: Paul Kaye, Beatriz Batarda, Kate Magowan, Mike Wilmot

- Reviewed by Vickie

Ibiza, Spain. Land of excess. Excess drink, excess drugs, excess sex and excess sound. Embracing all of these things is legendary (and entirely fictional) club DJ Frankie Wilde (Paul Kaye), the subject of this mock-biopic.

Writer-director Michael Dowse—whose previous film, Fubar, was a rock mockumentary set in the realm of heavy metal—once again creates a convincing character who's immersed in the music community. This time around, it's the dance/rave/techno world providing the backdrop, with the maddeningly self-destructive Frankie Wilde as the centerpiece. Frankie is renowned for his skills on a turntable and the spoils of his fame course through his veins (literally). He's hepped up on cocaine, alcohol and more sex partners than he can count. His face is on the cover of magazines, and his presence at a club guarantees a packed crowd.

But all of this begins to evaporate when a degenerative hearing problem grows worse by the day, until Frankie is completely deaf. Unable to hear music, Frankie's life spirals out of control as the one thing he was good at in life is taken away. Unable to function and numbing his pain with every narcotic under the sun, Frankie seems like a lost cause... until a rather grotesque epiphany shakes him out of his funk and he gradually learns to cope with, and accept, his hearing loss.

For a while, I thought this was an actual biopic of a real person, even if some of what transpires onscreen seems so absurd, so beyond-belief and so disgusting that it made me think twice. It wasn't until the film was over and I read the press notes did I realize that no, this guy wasn't for real. He's a character, just like the scary, giant, coked-up badger in an apron that torments him in his hallucinations. (Think: Donnie Darko's maniacal giant bunny, Frank, only fatter.)

Paul Kaye throws himself into his role to a commendable, if unsettling, degree. Frankie's wired, frenetic, passionate and wildly out of control, but also vulnerable, pained and desperate, and Kaye pulls off both ends of the emotional spectrum. There's also a scene where Frankie walks through his living room in a drug-induced haze, dressed in a bathrobe and with a huge, slimy, hanging collection of snot oozing from his nostril. Now THAT'S acting! (Ewwww.)

The film is being marketed as a comedy, but—save for a few scenes—I didn't really find it that funny. The tone bounces around a bit (sometimes it's silly, sometimes it's serious), and there are several extended sequences that could have been trimmed (or left out completely) without taking away from the story. For me, the second half of the film (post-diagnosis) is far more interesting than the first, and there are some great moments between Frankie and his lip-reading tutor turned love interest (Beatriz Batarda).

It's All Gone Pete Tong does make a noteworthy addition to the world of movies about fictional music legends, and Frankie Wilde is, at the very least, a fascinating (though fake) subject.

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