Music Watch: 24 Hour Party People (2002)

Watched:  08/03/2026

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Winterbottom

Somehow in the past two weeks, I was in a group chat (in theory about Texas football) where the folks were discussing 24 Hour Party People (2002), which I'd never seen.  Then, an artist I follow on socials was discussing it this last week. When I saw it was recently added to Criterion, I decided now was the time.

A while ago I took to watching some documentaries on YouTube (of varying professional quality) about bands I like, or liked once upon a time.  And it became clear that while I am aware of bands and some of their music, I sure don't know much about what it's like to come up in the British music scene.  You get a real feel for how small England really is sometimes with how the music scene there is treated like a popularity contest with winners and losers and how much bleed over there is between fan bases.  

24 Hour Party People covers the rise of the Manchester music scene, from the mid-70's to the early 90's.  I vaguely remember it coming out but in 2002, I was a busy bee.  And, frankly, a small film about a music scene I wasn't that into wasn't the biggest draw.

However, this is an extraordinary movie.   A sort of grimy, gritty and ultimately delusionaslly optimistic and romantic film with a real love for a brief moment in time and culture that already has been mostly paved over and forgotten except by a small portion of a generation.  And, while I've enjoyed Steve Coogan before, this is the best possible deployment of Coogan.  

The film tracks the rise and collapse of Factory Records, through the eyes of one of the founders, Tony Wilson.  Factory was instrumental to the British post-punk scene and helped pave the way to where music would go, as well as music culture through their club, The Hacienda.  

The film is told with a 4th-wall-breaking, Coogan-as-Wilson-narrating-to-the-camera style.  It is genius and hysterical.  Wilson is an unreliable narrator, and sometimes he's called on it in the movie by real people who were there appearing and saying so.  Not much catches me by surprise in movies these days, but this sure did.

I barely listened to Joy Division or New Order in my youth, and Happy Mondays were sort of a One Hit Wonder on this side of the pond (and after purchasing their cassette, not really my bag).

But it's a story of rock and roll excesses and what faith in the music - a sort of belief in "authenticity" that became passe and then mocked by subsequent generations.  And, maybe this movie is both a pro and con argument for what it means to believe in the art first and foremost, signed in blood.  Literally.

Stylistically, the movie is a montage, moving between film stocks, through styles, moods.  It uses real archival footage here and there (Sex Pistols and Siouxsie).  While it unavoidably falls into rock n' roll movie tropes in some ways - after all, things only go sideways so many ways with sex, drugs and rock and roll - the novel ways in which things go wrong can feel like a delight, even if this is only semi-fictional.  

Mostly, Tony Wilson seems like someone you kind of think you should hate, but his unwavering belief in what he's doing is absolutely charming, even as you can see him accidentally laying landmines he'll walk over later.

This is one I'd certainly watch again, even if I'm lukewarm on some of the music.  I guess when a movie is this charming in its own way, and refuses to take itself at all seriously, you of have to love it.