24 Hour Party People

Prolific director Michael Winterbottom is unafraid of mythologising a slice of recent musical/cultural history in this comedy drama, which tells the story of the rise and fall of Manchester's Factory Records and the world-famous Hacienda nightclub. Using TV presenter and Factory impresario Tony Wilson to tell the tale — often directly to camera — is the movie's masterstroke. Wilson, played with relish by Steve Coogan, is in real life a self-publicist of gigantic proportions, so when he compares shambolic Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder (an uncanny impersonation by Danny Cunningham) to WB Yeats, you take it with a pinch of salt but buy into it anyway. Unlikely to make sense to anyone who didn't experience the music and mania of the “Madchester” years — and yet bound to enrage those who were there with its flippant abuse of documentary truth — this is an infectious, well-cast blend of evocative energy, fine vintage music and irreverent humour.

A true story, of drugs and rock, of pop success and business failure, that is treated as low comedy; it will be enjoyed by those who can relate to the music and the brief years when Manchester bands were significant.