It's All Gone Pete Tong

The title of It's All Gone Pete Tong is a piece of 1990s rhyming slang meaning 'wrong'; specifically, haven't things gone awry in an amusing my-God-aren't-we-all-out-of-it manner that was very much the tenor of those times. Despite its title, It's All Gone Pete Tong is an endearing film, quite removed from rave exploitica such as Human Traffic or drug porn like Spun. Sure, the storytelling is one-foot-after-another but this film is by no means the drug casualty its title suggests.

Frankie Wilde (Kaye) is an "Ibeefa" DJ in his pomp, nosing up molehills of cocaine chased down with four fingers of single malt. He has a hit single and a somewhat tarnished trophy wife Sonja (Magowan). From these nauseous heights, the film mocks the scene's excesses. (Does the Ibiza scene have anything other than excesses?). During a game of tennis a mullered Wilde moots the idea of his own celebrity-endorsed hummus, an idea which Sonja takes up and suggests as the title of his new album. Cut to Wilde banging his wife from behind as she is bent over the net.

While it takes the mockumentary format pioneered by Christopher Guest's improvisatory Best In Show and A Mighty Wind, cutting commentary from talking heads such as Carl Cox and Tiësto against action, this is not wholly a satire of the scene. In his previous film FUBAR, director Dowse picked apart adolescent heavy metal culture before veering off into tragedy as one of the main characters developed cancer. Similarly, as Frankie Wilde loses his hearing - and therefore the one thing he loves, the music - we are riding pinion as the DJ races downhill to rock bottom.

Wilde has a mangy mongrel's charisma. Kaye excels in the physicality of the character, whether he's depressed in bed, with cornflakes stuck to his pallid flesh like warts, or blearily trooping through the house in his gown (an intentional reference to The Dude from The Big Lebowski), an inch of cocaine-threaded mucus flailing from his nostril. All-nighter grubby and stubbly, squinting as the synapses regroup after another ferocious narcotic assault, Wilde starts out as an accurate caricature and holds our attention as the amusing parody becomes a character you care for.

As Wilde's hearing deteriorates, this life falls away from him. Soon it is just him and a giant cocaine-obsessed badger. In one moment of deranged genius, Wilde straps fireworks to his head and lights the fuse, blowing his head off just to hear something. From this low-point, he is reborn. Ditching the coke, he hooks up with Penelope (Batarda), a deaf woman who teaches him how to lip read. Their love story accompanies Frankie's long journey back to the top.