It’s All Gone Pete Tong

Michael Dowse’s follow-up to Fubar and send-up of rave culture played better at home than in the U.S., where critics complained that the mock-doc’s second half ruined the fun of the first. The ‘jarring shifts in tone and lack of cohesiveness’ killed the buzz of Frank Schneck at The Hollywood Reporter and The Village Voice did not approve, despite an inspired turn by British comic Paul Kaye, that the story of his club DJ’s descent into drugs and deafness ‘morphs into a sweet little tale about lip-reading and Photoshop beat-matching.’

No argument there, says Peter Howell at the Toronto Star, but Kaye is nonetheless ‘mesmerizing’ and should be remembered come awards time. Meanwhile, Katherine Monk at The Vancouver Sun raves like, well, a raver that Pete Tong is nothing less than a ‘revelation in Canadian cinema… a subtle well-crafted film that seems to have no agenda other than entertainment.’

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It’s that ‘rarest of birds,’ says Stephen Cole at The Globe and Mail, ‘a good-natured Canadian romantic comedy’ that, for the most part, avoids the clichés of cross-cultural coupling. ‘A classically playful’ love story, he adds, nodding to the considerable charms of stars Arsinée Khanjian, as a middle-aged Muslim looking to spread her wings, and Shawn Doyle as her affable all-Canadian boyfriend.

It’s up there with Mambo Italiano and Double Happniess, nods Monk, commenting that writer/director Ruba Nadda is blessed with the ‘delicate hand of a heart surgeon or bomb squad specialist.’ She’s breathed ‘new life into a classic integration story,’ agrees NOW Magazine. ‘A quiet charmer.’

Compiled by Sean Davidson