Review: Exit Through The Gift Shop
The Pitch: Art meets life meets art, with its good friends sarcasm and irony.
The Review: Banksy is a modern phenomenon. Love him, loathe him or really not care, he is the foremost proponent of the street art movement, and has regularly hit the headlines over the last 10 years.
So after moving into galleries, he’s now taken his work to the cinema, in the form of this documentary – although that may be making too strong a claim to its grasp on the truth. In this film, narrated by Rhys Ifans to add credibility to the story, we hear overlapping stories of Banksy having a film made by him by a French nutjob, and then Banksy making a film about him instead.
And the end result is rather good. By turns thought provoking and highly amusing, the overall effect seems to be to puncture the pomopsity of art, and to question its meaning and very existence at certain levels. But there’s a strong narrative to the structure, setting up some big laughs, and the ‘characters’ are oddly likeable.
The only real remaining question is exactly what’s happening. Is Thierry real? Is he actually Banksy? Maybe that’s missing the point somewhat – and thankfully an answer isn’t required to enjoy what’s on offer.
Why see it at the cinema: To truly appreciate the qualities (or lack thereof) of Thierry’s first film attempt.
The Score: 8/10
The Movie Evangelist 
January 8, 2011 at 8:32 pm
[…] actually matter as it’s just so damn entertaining, which is a conclusion I came to in my original review. Of course, the internet being what it is, I could have come to that conclusion since and you just […]