Now, until this DVD arrived courtesy of my friends at Royal Mail, I’d always thought that "rockumentary" was a made-up word courtesy of now legendary spoof movie Spinal Tap. But no, there really are such things out there, though the ‘documentary’ part can safely be disputed as this is much more Kirsty’s Home Videos than Panorama.

The background to the movie goes like this; punk rock super-group (a contradiction in terms, no?) Blink 182 decide that they want a fairly unknown band called Kut U Up (I guess they skipped those all important early spelling lessons) to go out as one of the bands for the appropriately named Pop Disaster Tour.

It soon becomes apparent that Kut U Up aren’t latter-day Mozarts, and their fairly perfunctory brand of indentikit punk rock is merely a background for the main focus of this DVD – namely, watching adults (who should by now know better) get roaring drunk, fall over, vomit, "smash stuff up" and generally act like hyperactive spawns of Satan. Now, this is where I struggle with the review. If I were still a teenager or had I suffered a nasty blow to the head in later life, I might find these drunken shenanigans highly entertaining if not side-splittingly, bowel-emptyingly funny. The thing is, I’m not and I haven’t, so scenes of one of the band having their backside branded with a snooker table "spider", or drinking an interesting cocktail of beer and bird shit, left me kind of cold.

However, I tried the same scenes on my younger cousin, the one with the lip-ring and skateboards, and he found it highly entertaining. They wouldn’t let me into the mental hospital to fulfill the other half of the experiment, but I’m hoping to sneak in as a therapist and report back next week, assuming of course they let me out again.

The camerawork, wobbly in places, makes it look a bit like The Blair Witch Project crossed with Jackass, and while a few songs are thrown into the soundtrack, this is mostly an exercise in watching drunken men doing stupid stuff for no apparent reason other than the camera was rolling and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Not my cup of tea, but I’m not the target market - my younger cousin Charlie, very much the target market in his baggy jeans and hoodie, wants it to be known that he thinks this DVD is "wicked but there’s not enough Jimmy Eat World", and who am I to argue? Exactly.
(2/5)
(4˝/5 - Charlie Shanks)

Release Date: 02 February 2004