jackstomlinson Love this movie and great acting!Looks good, hilarious subtle comedy, and you hate a character in the beginning that you end up loving at the end.Stupendous job.

meandmy bigmouth The first 15 minutes of Frankie are truly obnoxious. I'd spent many a summer in Ibiza during the mid '80s (luckily having a relative who owned a bar over there made it even more fun ;) these days I can do without the loud mouthed coked up idiot type that he plays so astonishingly well.But the inebriated madman at the start of the film is soon changed when his hearing fails and he has to re-evaluate his life and values. Paul Kaye plays this part with such humanity and conviction that it truly astounded me. He scarily managed to convince me that he was Frankie Wilde and that his world had collapsed in the most terrible way possible for a DJ.Shockingly enjoyable, many scenes are laugh out loud funny, gross, moving, honest and truly captures a time when everyone was "on one". Acting of the highest quality by all concerned. Beatrice Batada was breathtakingly beautiful as the deaf teacher who helps Frankie learn how to lip-read. A wonderful romance, comedy, tragedy party film.

siderite The story of a man who gets to the top (money, fame, women, drugs) and then falls hard. But he gets up and does what most people thought impossible. It's a DJ who creates his last album as a complete deaf person. It's even more powerful as it is based on a true story. This man really exists.The film is made almost like a reenactment. With bits played by actors, but trying to be as accurate and unbiased as possible. I thought the lead actor played very well and the direction was good. It is in the same time a hero story as it is an accurate overview of the soulless music industry.It is certainly worth a view, but I don't recommend watching it with grandmothers or anything like that. The title is a bit of a DJ slang thing, it comes from an European DJ radio show. It may have been a bad choice, as it made me think the movie was a fart/martial arts comedy type before I read the reviews.

Minstrelo A visually-based comedy with Paul Kaye as an Ibiza DJ going through a crisis did not immediately stand out to me as an appealing prospect, I must say, and it's testament to Dowse that he could pull it off with such class, especially with it being his first major project. Kaye had become an increasingly dreary presence on UK TV, even hosting a particularly awful game-show on the BBC for a short time I seem to recall, just one of a sizeable host of incumbent, tired hacks on the British television scene, and as much he may well admit.It was interesting, then, to see him take on the role of a renowned DJ, a profession that can offer much by way of booty, but that is not traditionally credited as being one requiring much musical talent, perhaps unfairly. Though the film makes light fun of the DJs place in the music industry, (Kaye goes deaf from over-indulgence of all kinds, but somehow managed to climb his way back to the top of the scene) it also seeks out and finds a genuine place whereby a DJ can be as intuitive and soulful as any other kind of musician. Therein lies the success of It's All Gone Pete Tong, to be so convincingly two things at once, and for them to not collide in the least, as so often happens in comedies that attempt to convey some semblance of human understanding, or those which aspire to inspire us. Kaye was excellently endearing as Wilde, and just as often hilarious with all of his perfectly selected facial expressions and tone of delivery. He plays his first attempt to order a drink while deaf with comic perfection.The film satirises, to an extent, standard tragicomedy motifs, especially those dealing with a man's battle with himself (the excess scenes with the cocaine badger were particularly hilarious), and all at the same time, it is a film works in its own terms as a tragicomedy, and a moving tale of creativity and possibility. The life Frankie Wilde leads in the early parts of the film can seem crushing, and it can seem rapturous. It's all a cycle, until his life catches up with him, though not in the most clichéd and predictable way, but in that he actually starts to go deaf, and the only sense he owns which he can make sense of is lost to him.Of course, he learns to adapt his other senses to supplement the loss, but none of this is presented in the most melodramatic fashion, nor is it exploitative.At one point he goes to meet a woman who will instruct him how to read lips, and communicate intelligibly, and in that sense she teaches not to understand again, but for the first time. He meets her outside some pristine white building, in a quiet location on the island, a haven away from the deadening rush of people.The soundtrack is excellent and, as it is largely made up of non-clubbing songs, it serves a similar purpose to that of the sweet woman who serves as Frankie's guide and haven, and who will eventually become his girlfriend, in a very moving while at times confused relationship. She helps him up from his fall, to rise again to DJing success, but in satisfactory fashion he shuns his career as soon as he reaches the peak of it again, as he has been bestowed with a true gift, that of perspective.The natural setting is beautiful of course, but the cinematography is such as to find beauty in all the dirty pockets of Ibiza, and every aspect of Frankie's ostensibly pathetic life.I love this film, and I'm quite serious.