User Reviews

Attendees at Shane Meadows' 'This Is England' premiere in October 2006 were treated to a whole other sideshow that evening at London's Odeon West End. For mingling with the guests, sporting familiar shaggy locks and accents that could shatter breeze blocks, was a bunch of gawky indie lads from Sheffield, who had recently smashed their way into the record books.

At the beginning of the year, the Arctic Monkeys' album became the fastest-selling debut in UK chart history, going on to win the Mercury Prize that September. And though celebrities and movie launches go together like cocktails and canapes, there was something rather more significant about young Alex Turner and Co's presence, at the director's invitation. After all, given their shared brand of Midlands dirty realism, it seemed only a matter of time before their creative orbits collided.

And - boom - so they did: 'Le Donk And Scor-Zay-Zee' is the hilarious result of a collaboration between Meadows and the 'Arctical Monkeys', as Paddy Considine's roadie and failed musician "Le Donk" refers to them in this nano-budget, wholly improvised comedy - a glorious mash-up of fact and fiction, shot in exactly five days under Shane's new '5 Day Features Movement.' (Think of it like 'Dogme' in a hurry.)

Via improvised routines which owe less to Christopher Guest than to Mike Leigh's character-establishing sessions in public places, Shane Meadows (or rather 'Shane Meadows') trails the blustering chancer around with a two-man crew, documenting his attempts to secure his lodger and white rapping protégé Scor-Zay-Zee a 2.30pm Sunday slot at a 50,000-strong 'Monkeys gig. In the event, cast and crew simply pitched up at the real-life concert at Manchester's Old Trafford, planted themselves backstage and filmed the results.

Along the way, the would-be Svengali (birth name Nicholas) visits his heavily-pregnant ex, Olivia (Olivia Coleman), and her live-in boyfriend Richard (the film's editor Richard Graham), while jealously muscling in on Scor-Zay-Zee's emceeing. If Black Grape had Kermit, and The Streets had 'Leo the Lion', Scor-Zay-Zee has a volatile middle-aged bloke whose unique backing vocals consist solely of chanting the names of every notable he can remember from Ryan Seacrest to Harold Shipman, Tinky Winky and Worzel Gummidge. And Selwyn Froggitt. Given the fact it didn't even get its own spin-off movie (during an era when every British sitcom from Father, Dear Father to That's Your Funeral spawned big-screen versions), this is almost certainly the only feature film in existence to name check Bill Maynard's 1970s Yorkshire Television comedy.

Will fatherhood finally make a man of Le Donk? ("I can watch him growing up via the web, like having a cyber-pet" he reassures Olivia). Will Scor-Zay-Zee, who's "just trying to make mum proud" ever get his one big chance? And if so, will the baby-faced, Buddha-sized rapper be allowed to perform a stage dive on the day? (As Le Donk suggests, "you could always do a Beth Ditto and climb down...")

The driven, compulsive Meadows has made, and continues to make, dozens upon dozens of short films, documentaries and promos. They might not all be destined for the silver screen or listed on the IMDb (the 15-second long 'The Stairwell', for example, makes 2008's 'Somers Town' look like 'Shoah') but it doesn't mean Meadows takes any less care over them.

Le Donk And Scor-Zay-Zee is only slightly longer than Somers Town, but to write it off as a mere divertissement would be just as short-sighted as calling the latter 'an extended Eurostar commercial.' This is jaw-bustingly funny stuff, uproarious, delightful and unexpectedly touching, containing more laugh-out-loud moments than most Hollywood comedies twice the length. Watching this, it also makes you wonder how many people were in on the joke.

It is also fantastic to see Meadows and Considine - the Martin, uh, Scor-Zay-Zee and Bobby De Niro of British cinema - making movies together again after a five-year hiatus. As the mardy, self-deluding Donk, Considine is a blast; a fully-fleshed, three-dimensional idiot, with echoes of Viz comic's Sid The Sexist along with Paul Coogan's Paul Calf and Tommy Saxondale. And if you're thinking the resemblance seems a bit too close to the latter, Considine's roadie character actually precedes Coogan's by some 15 years. "I feel like Donnie Darko going in to infiltrate the Mafia" he wildly ad-libs at one point, and you can practically see him thinking, "What does that even mean?"

The Islam-converted Scor-Zay-Zee, who previously "lost it on the bud - intense paranoia", and now wears a baseball cap sporting the legend "Kids need hugs not drugs" is the target for most of Le Donk's self-loathing verbals, whether dismissed as "Uncle Bulgaria" or "the Honey Monster with a lobotomy". Yet Scorz, aka Dean Palinczuk, a real-life rapper, whose brilliantly excoriating, Daily Telegraph-baiting track "Great Britain" received much BBC airplay in 2004, clearly isn't the simpleton his 'manager' makes him out to be. No less a personage than Chuck D once bigged up Scor-Zay-Zee's former Nottingham crew Out Da Ville, and Meadows' film is as much a showcase for Palinczuk's lyrical skills as it is of Considine's improv chops, or the director's guerrilla film-making abilities. Just wait till he hits the stage.

And the Arctic Monkeys? Well, there's not a note of their music in here (if there's a complaint, it's only that Meadows' ongoing love affair with slightly twee acoustic folk is occasionally a little too intrusive at times), but stick around for the credits, as Considine, in character, regales the half-bemused, half-appalled boys backstage with seedy chapters from his touring days, alternately involving a New York hermaphrodite - and a truly chronic case of piles.