The Killjoy Division

24 Hour Party People (2002)
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce

A disappointing mess of a film, 24 Hour Party People should have been much better, given its subject matter. It concerns the rise and fall of Factory Records and the Manchester music scene, which gave us Joy Division, New Order, and Happy Mondays. It also gave us The Smiths and Stone Roses, though you wouldn't really know it from the rose-colored revisionism here. People's central argument is that Shaun Ryder (Happy Mondays) and Ian Curtis (Joy Division) were geniuses on the level of Yeats, and that Factory Records ringleader Tony Wilson made it all happen, from the bleak new wave you loved in college to the rave scene that ravaged your younger sister.

Er, sorry, I lost myself in that sentence. How apropos that my writing should be incoherent in trying to address the sprawl of it all. My main issue with the film is that it's way too much about Tony Wilson and not nearly enough about the bands. For a movie that actually has "party" in the title, the proceedings are amazingly draggy.

The film is still recommendable for anyone who is seriously into the bands represented, or anyone who was there, but for the casual viewer, it's a whole lot of mushmouth Britspeak and Trainspotting-lite energy. Some quirky touches fall very flat, although I very much liked a scene wherein Tony Wilson, smoking a fat Barbadan spliff, has a vision of God, who proclaims that the songs of Vin E. Reilly are "good music to chill out to." Also, there is surprising humor in spots such as the treatment of Ian Curtis's suicide. The flipness saves the film from toppling over under its grandiosity.

I want to say this movie was excellent, but I'd be fooling myself, and lying to you. And seeing as I just got my 90-day sobriety coin from Liars Anonymous, I'm not about to fuck things up for 24 Hour Party People. Of course, I'm only even going to Liars Anonymous because I don't want to face my real issue: compulsive reviewing. Do they have a 12-step for that?

Review by Liliana Tiling-Moulding