It's All Gone Pete Tong

It's All Gone Pete Tong

It's All Gone Pete Tong

It's All Gone Pete Tong

source: It's All Gone Pete Tong

I saw a free screening of It's All Gone Pete Tong last night. Though the trailer seemed to market it as a mockumentary, this ended up being a 2nd-rate junkie movie. now, I have to admit, I don't typically like junkie movies since I have little reason to care about characters who mess up their lives by getting addicted to blow...however, the main DJ character was presented as such a bumbling idiot with zero redeeming qualities from the beginning, that no one in the theater seemed to give a damn. 95% of the intended funny dialogue had zero response from the audience. to break it down, this movie tried to be three things. in the first third, a mockumentary. the 2nd third, a junkie movie. the last third a sappy romance where everything works out in the end. it failed miserably at all of them. my favorite part is when Frankie, the DJ, has this amazing revelation that he can match beats by sight using these animated waveforms which appear on his laptop screen. it seems as though everyone involved in this film has magically forgotten about the existence of BPM counters for the past 5+ years (most club DJ mixers already have them built-in these days). i also like how he straps his feet to a pair of subs to help him "feel the bass", when in actuality a sub's cabinet would be the last thing in the room to vibrate. the only thing this film had going for it was the production quality. they did a good job of giving us the DJ's perspective and letting us hear what he hears while mixing records, though i never once saw a pitch control anywhere. you'll probably check this out anyway just because it's about a club DJ but it's a real stinker. as the marketing people stood outside asking the audience how the movie was, most people didn't say anything.

OK... so this was an unanticipated treat. Went for a sneak preview (secretly - against better knowledge - hoping on h2g2) and got this instead. Err.. the title.. OK - just forget about it. Probably just me (being dutch and all), but I rather failed to link the title to the movie. OK - first few minutes: "If it doesn't change, I'll walk out of this".. but after that.. hm.. catching.. really.. Won't tell a lot (I mean.. this film is meant to be seen.. not to read a summary, but really.. this is catching.. surely a low-budget film.. but almost guaranteed to be under-rated.. if only for the (at least as far as I can tell) sheer impossibility to describe it without giving spoilers or doing it unjust. Just go an see it.. it even has some sort of "happy end" for those die-hard feel-good-movie lovers.

Simply awful. The longest 90 minute movie you will ever see. Snot hanging out of the nose was the icing on the cake. Spinal Tap gone wrong. So the guy's got blue eyes, big deal. When he decides he's going to fight his deafness it started to show promise. But then it degenerated back to where it came from. Not worth wasting 90 minutes of anyone's life to watch. If this chronicles someone's life then maybe it has a reason to exist. But it is just plain horrible. If you need something to watch, throw a dart at a random list of movies and you will come up with something better than this one! Load music, sensual innuendos, you can get that anywhere. Not artsy enough for IFC or Sundance. A total waste of time.

When my husband and I went to see "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" we saw the trailer for "It's All Gone Pete Tong" and we thought it looked cute, so we decided to come back and see it. The trailer and posters indicated it would feature Ibiza living it large with sun, sand, sex, and rocking beats. I thought it would be a treat for us as my husband loves dance music and synthesizers and we both enjoyed seeing Paul Kaye's TV shows, especially "Perfect World." We thought the film started off well: my husband grinned at seeing familiar faces in the interview sequences and familiar places in the club scenes. The video for Frankie's single was so MTV Dance, I expected to see the devil logo in the top left hand corner. We were taken aback, though, at the portrayal of Frankie losing his hearing. "Pete Tong" began to remind me of the TV movies I used to see when I lived in Florida back in the 1980s: the American networks at the time kept showing TV Movies of the Week centred on the story of someone struck down by a tragic illness, such as Joanne Woodward discovering she has Alzheimer's. The sequence in the recording studio was so graphic and shocking I couldn't watch it and covered my eyes with my hands: it was as haunting and grim as Christiane F. It's rather ironic as the drug scenes in "Pete Tong" are played for laughs – still, the cocaine badger was moving, particularly when Frankie shot it and its true nature was revealed. The movie is confused about what tone it wants to set: while Frankie descends into isolation and further self destruction the film features two of its funniest scenes: the shaman blowing drugs up Frankie's nose and Frankie trying to commit suicide by tying dynamite to his head, lighting the fuses, then changing his mind, trying to put out the fuses, jumping into the swimming pool, and finding the pool covered with a plastic sheet. It was hilarious in a Looney Tunes cartoon style but a bit disturbing taking place after the stark recording studio scene. I couldn't really enjoy the humour of the film, because the farce of Frankie's drug taking, drinking, and partying didn't sit with the loss of his hearing. I wasn't convinced either by his recovery and his comeback. We have friends who are partially deaf and who find it very difficult to cope in a hearing world. We didn't believe that Frankie would find a lip reading teacher who speaks Spanish and English as a second language (who happens to be attractive as well) who could teach him to lip read so quickly that within weeks he can fully understand what people are saying to him. I have lived in non-English speaking countries and I found it hard enough to live and cope as a learner of the language: I can't imagine how difficult it would be to adjust further after losing all of one's hearing capabilities but I can imagine that would it take many months or years to find ways of managing daily life, let alone also discovering ways to resume a career in music. I was also wondering why didn't Frankie use some of the software before to help him while he was losing his hearing: surely he would be familiar with some of it from his role as a music producer and mixer. I could forgive the film for not being truly representative of the conflicts of the hearing impaired because it's a comedy. Or is it. The atmosphere of the second half switched to a Children of a Lesser God style, with Frankie hailed as a hero of the deaf. Some hero -- while he objected to being put in this position, he agreed to appear in the ad with soda poured in his ears. Paul Kaye's performance is outstanding: it's impressive how funny he is as the drugged up Frankie and how touching he is as the suddenly ethical Frankie. But the film is a mash up of too many different genres that aren't well mixed together. I would recommend watching instead the original sources "It's All Gone Pete Tong" is trying to sample, and Paul Kaye's "Perfect World".

Hoping to fall into the grand tradition of music mockumentaries, such as Monty Python's The Rutles and, the standard for these things, This Is Spinal Tap, It's All Gone Pete Tong fails. The story begins with fictitious English DJ Pete Tong, living on the Spanish island of Ibiza with a beautiful model wife and all the posh parties he could ever possibly attend. What could go wrong? Well, deafness for starters. You see, Tong was born with a condition that causes him to gradually go deaf. He attempts to hide it from his manager and public at large, but to no avail, it's all gone…. When Pete Tong loses his hearing, he loses his ability to spin great dance beats which in turn costs him his wife, manager, and recording contract. His shallow world of dance beats, sex and drugs comes crashing down. Ultimately, Tong picks himself up and learns to read lips from an improbably attractive deaf woman named Sonja. He, naturally, develops a relationship with Sonja as she teaches him to read lips and accept his deafness. Tong, then learns to "feel" the beats in a new way, and his recording begins again and he becomes something of a spokesperson for the deaf. Then, just as he ascends to the top again, Mr. Pete Tong, along with his new love, Sonja, mysteriously disappear. Much like, Woody Allen's satire on film-making in Hollywood Ending, where a film director, after becoming blind, still makes a film, It's Gone Wrong Pete Tong, relies a great deal that the idea of a DJ going deaf will be really funny in a wildly satirical way. It's not. It's easy to get the initial joke that dance music is so vapid that the DJs that create the tunes don't even need to hear, but you have to fill up the two hours with more then that. And, therein lies the problem. It's Gone Wrong Pete Tong, doesn't have much else to offer in the way of genuine laughs. To be sure, it does have its moments. Tong is pestered by a hallucination of a badger, "badgering" him and whom he eventually dispatches with a shotgun. The exchanges he has with the animal were often amusing. In the studio, two histrionic Austrian musicians, who got a chuckle from me every time they opened their mouths, help Tong with his ill-fated second album. And, lastly, at the beginning of the film, we get to see a video of Tong's latest hit, with him ridiculously chasing around his wife to be, with various hunting utensils. That's pretty much it from the laughs department. The interviews with those who "know" Tong aren't funny, nor is most of the material stuffed in between these scenes. What, ultimately becomes aggravating is the film carries a weird self-satisfaction vibe throughout, as if it's quite pleased with how good it is. Pete Tong's descent into deafness is also equally tiresome. As I understand it, this is supposed to be the more serious side of the picture. There really is nothing believable about his adjustment to deafness. He does it in a pretty matter of fact way and develops a relationship with the attractive, naturally, Spanish woman in the same matter of fact way. At this point of the film, I couldn't help but think, "who cares," Tong still has, apparently, a lovely villa, lots of cash, and a new girlfriend. There is just nothing to involve yourself with. It's All Wrong Pete Tong, is definitely a mockumentary, but, alas, not a very good one.

The good thing about this that's at least fresh: Almost no movies about dance music and the club scene (if even made) hit the cinemas. And it radiates lots of energy too, from the music to the portrayal of Ibiza. But the main problem is that it can't decide what it wants to be. Although it definitely likes to be a mockumentary in the line of This is Spinal Tap, the makers also realized they wouldn't want to play copycat. However, it fails grossly on the jokes because it's not very well written and most characters are underdeveloped. And it has no arc in its script and directing to make it to 90 minutes, so why not edit it down to 75? The production department and cinematography still try to save the day (e.g. Paul's home). In a strange way and unexpectedly so It's all gone Pete Tong works much better as a simple drama in the line of Almost Famous. Especially the scenes with Beatriz Batarda offer some acting power. Conclusion: it's a mess, it somewhat entertains at a basic level, but you better spend a night in your favorite club.