FACT or fiction, myth or pop history, Michael Winterbottom's haphazard joyride through Madchester rock is a riot act to rival Julien Temple's The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle.

There is a mutual starting point: punk vagabonds The Sex Pistols, whose Manchester gig to all of 42 people in June 1976, shaped the future world of one Tony Wilson: Factory Records boss, Hacienda club owner and the brusque, self-opinionated Granada Reports presenter who inspired Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge.

Coogan now returns the insult by playing Wilson, who announces "I'm a minor character in my own story" and proceeds to be the capricious narrative driving force, stepping in and out of the careering story to comment acidly at every opportunity, just like punk puppet master Malcolm McLaren in his account of the rise and fall of the Pistols in Temple's 1979 film.

Where that was a documentary with a licence to bolster McLaren's ego at the expense of artful punk dodger Johnny Rotten, 24 Hour Party People is a mockumentary, re-enacting characters and landmarks moments in the careers of Joy Division, the Happy Mondays and the birth of rave at the money-guzzling Hacienda.

With his ragged camerawork and fast-edited, fanzine-style, post-modern directing, Winterbottom and his screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce build up the myths yet send them up too, be it mad genius producer Martin Hannett or maddening junkie Shaun Ryder, whose escapades with the Happy Mondays take up too much screen time.

There is love and affection here, not for the cocksure, clowning yet impressively bloody-minded Wilson, but for Joy Division, and in particular Ian Curtis, whose suicide closes chapter one of the Wilson years. Sean Harris's uncanny impersonation is truly affecting.

However, this is not a biopic for everyone: it is better to know the characters already, not least to appreciate the jokes at the expense of Durutti Column's stoic Vini Reilly or the complicity of Howard Devoto and other cameo-making Manchester legends in furnishing the myths and conceits.

However, for those who love their Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays or even A Certain Ratio, this scruffy, over-long, cussed film - and it is a very English, very northern film, not an air-brushed movie - will celebrate its rebellious, raucous, irreverent, out of control spirit. It has Made in Manchester stamped all over it.

Updated: 09:20 Friday, April 12, 2002