Tong can do no wrong

Not referring to Pete Tong's DJing talents but rather his name in the film, 'It's all gone Pete Tong' which we rented over the weekend.

This is a great dark comedy that will have you laughing at the Ibizian antics then switching the emotions with gasps of drama. Introduced as a biopic with interviews of real and made up club legends, the basic plot sees a super DJ dealing with his deafness. Clubs and drugs feature heavily with the lead character, Frankie Wilde and his coccaine obsession portrayed as a man-sized badger with a magic wand has wicked results. It's only when Frankie is at his lowest ebb do you start to feel something for the character where he starts to come to terms with the disability then meets someone who changes his life. Paul Kaye plays his part perfectly with all the hallmarks of a coke-caner. I was expecting a little of Kevin and Perry go large but thankfully both the humour and music score avoids this. It also avoids the cheesiness of a life changing situation mixing in a mini-love story as well. This is a clever film sign-posting the way with similarities to Van Gogh's life which I'm sure the script-writers wanted.

Whether I was reading too much into it though we saw it twice, there were loads of references I remember from the Van Gogh museum and a TV documentary. The self-portrait in the villa, the hallucinatory cocaine-pushing badger who had a magic wand could have been the Absinth fairy, the Franke Wilde character looked like Van Gogh especially with the straw sun hat, one of the interviews mentioned his wife liked sleeping around and Frankie liked those sort of women (Van Gogh slept with prostitutes) and finally the large ear statue in the advert he acted in which has obvious connections to the Dutch nutcase, I mean artist.


Saturday was a driving disaster with so much traffic we turned back from going to Wareham beach. Ended up having a picnic near Sandbanks and saw some lizards (honest!).