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Plot:
Spanning from the 1970's to early 1990's, this is the story of the Manchester music scene... Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After...( read more 
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:April 13, 2008
A classic historical story with a nutty twist by Steve Coogan. If you enjoy music and british humour, then this movie is great for you.
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MCT:April 12, 2008
Having little to no knowledge of the people involved in the Manchester music scene during this period of time, I really didn't know how I would react to this film. Thank goodness 24 Hour Party People is enjoyable even without inside knowledge of the bands and the movements on display. The format of the film acts as a guide because Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson is constantly breaking the fourth wall by turning directly to the camera, explaining that "this is a reinactment" or "this really happened", giving background on the bands, and even pointing out all of the cameos in the film. I was relieved to have these explanations because there is almost too much crammed into this movie. I know Winterbottom is aiming for a broad history and I definitely got that. With any broad overview though, the film has to skim over certain people and events, some of which are quite interesting and I would have liked to know more about, especially the earlier days of Factory Records rather than the later rave years. I felt like everyone other than Coogan got a little short-changed here. These gripes aside, I absolutely loved this movie. Steve Coogan is, well, Steve Coogan and gives a strong performance. I really liked Sean Harris's haunting performance as Ian Curtis, the troubled lead singer of Joy Division. Paddy Considine and Andy Serkis are also memorable here. Most importantly, I feel Winterbottom captured the energy of Manchester during this time, helped by actual footage of some of the bands. I need to have a "breaking the fourth wall" Winterbottom/Coogan films mini-marathon now and watch this and Tristram Shandy (another movie I really liked) back to back.
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MCT:April 10, 2008I watched this movie with little prior knowledge to Manchester England in the 70's and 80's and the rise of music there under Tony Wilson, and came out... not necessarily caring. It's like Tony Wilson said "They're applauding the DJ. Not the music, not the musician, not the creator, but the medium." This film is an experiment; it could have been portrayed so many different and/or better ways, but in the end if it wasn't this way it would not have the same feeling, which i still can't tell if i like or not. At first I thought the film was trash, it wasn't making sense, but as i continued to watch I understood that this movie celebrates the time period, not the people. I suppose a second or third viewing will put it more into perspective.
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MCT:April 5, 2008
Steve Coogan delivers a terrific performance as Tony Wilson in this look at the Manchester music scene. Coogan (who apparentley based his character Alan Partridge on Wilson) is well suited to this part, serving as part narrator to what is going on. Teaming up with director Michael Winterbottom they produce an original and sometimes gritty film. A great supporting cast and soundtrack that includes Joy Division, Happy Mondays and New Order make this a good watch.
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MCT:March 27, 2008Tony Wilson: "June 4th, 1976. The Sex Pistols play Manchester for the very first time. There are only 42 people in the audience... but every single one is feeding on a power, an energy and a magic. lnspired, they will go out and perform wondrous deeds. For instance, Howard Devoto, at the front, Pete Shelley, at the back. They organised this gig. They're way ahead of everyone in Manchester. They're already the Buzzcocks. Howard later sleeps with my wife. Behind me are Stiff Kittens. Soon to become Warsaw,
later to become Joy Division... finally to become New Order. That's John the Postman. He's... a postman. And that guy dancing at the front, that's Martin Hannett... the only bona fide genius
in this story. Well, one of the only two bona fide geniuses in this story. He will later try to kill me."
It feels as if we've waited an eternity for 24 Hour Party People, Michael Winterbottom's glorious 'mocku-feature' about Manchester and its "mad music" sound of the 1980s. Released in the UK in April 2002, 24 Hour Party People is Winterbottom's Almost Famous, his love letter to Manchester and the post-punk revolution that made that city the place anyone wanted to be, that he and producer Andrew Eaton brainstormed while avoiding the cold climes of Canada during the shoot of their last film, The Claim (2000). 24 Hour People wasn't just worth the wait, it was a dream come true.
24 Hour Party People, named after an early Happy Mondays song, is an irreverent piece to say the least. A biopic of sorts, the film's creators (including scriptwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce) do all they can to tear down the inflated genre. Almost functioning as two films in one, 24 Hour Party People is based around the life and times of the still very alive Granada TV reporter Tony Wilson, one of the chaotic architects behind the famed Hacienda Night Club and influential music label Factory Records.
The parallel film is of course about the music itself. The bands and individuals featured in 24 Hour Party People (whether they were there or not sometimes) range from major, world-changing bands like Joy Division and their later incarnation New Order, to the Happy Mondays, the Duritti Column, The Fall, The Buzzcocks, manager Rob Gretton, Howard Devoto, Bernard Sumner and producer Martin Hannett, made eccentric and troll-like by an actor who seems to specialise in trolls these days, Andy Serkis ("Gollum" in Lord of the Rings).
After Wilson kicks off the proceedings with a madly funny recreation of a hang-gliding story for local Manchester TV, we veer straight into the Sex Pistols' first Manchester gig in 1976, where straight-to-camera again, Coogan's Wilson informs us that this is "where it all began" for the Manchester sound. Forty-seven people attended the gig (including "Tony the Postman"), though its inspiration proved infinite for the area. The film all but implodes around 1992, the year that Wilson and his associates ran out of money and closed the Hacienda, one of the acknowledged foundations of England's rave culture.
Winterbottom, Boyce, and Coogan all grew up in the "Madchester" scene, so the story is as much theirs, as fans, as it is the bands' or the film's mouthpiece, Wilson. Boyce could have waxed elegiac, mourning the loss of an era, or nostalgic in recalling the music so integral to his youth - which he still does, particularly in the tribute to Ian Curtis and the recreation of his suicide. But he eschews both, choosing, instead, to celebrate the Factory with absurd, ironic humour and a screenplay that breaks through the fourth wall for Wilson's constant asides to the audience (with dialogues such as "this scene didn't actually make it to the final cut. I'm sure it'll be on the DVD"). Winterbottom and cinematographer Robby Muller complement Boyce's script in grungy, hand-held, digital-video style that both lends the story a sense of immediacy and echoes Manchester's industrial milieu. You literally feel as if you're actually there.
Anybody who has ever experienced comedian/actor Steve Coogan's character Alan Partridge is sure to find a lot of that creation in his portrayal here of Tony Wilson, the irony being that said character was in part actually inspired by the guy in the first place. His performance is that kind of glue which keeps things vaguely adherent to some semblance of plot here is quite sublime, helped out no end by a not particularly big name, but no less talented because of it, supporting cast all faced with a rather lofty challenge - portraying an array of people all well-known, many of whom are still alive and still around. Some are spookily accurate, while some are merely representative without invoking any real sense of those they're playing. However, as with the screenplay, the direction, hell - even the whole Factory saga to a degree - it all works. Somehow. 24 Hour Party People is responsible for some of the most fun - memorable, meaningful fun - I have ever had while watching a film. An immediate, life-lasting favourite of mine.
Tony Wilson: "And tonight something equally epoch-making is taking place. See? They're applauding the DJ. Not the music, not the musician, not the creator, but the medium. This is it. The birth of rave culture. The beatification of the beat. The dance age. This is the moment when even the white man starts dancing. Welcome to Manchester."
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shortpantsromanceposted 192 days ago
