
Patti Cake$ is a god damn joy.
Balancing emotion and hilarity? That’s Patti Cake$.
I’ve been looking forward to Patti Cake$ ever since I saw the trailer. SO when I saw it in the schedule for the New Zealand International Film Festival, it’s the first movie I booked.
Patti Cake$ is about Patricia Dumbrowski (Danielle Macdonald). Known by her best friend Hareesh (Siddharth Dhananjay) as Patti Cake$ or Killer P, and by everyone else as Dumbo. Both Hareesh and Patti have the same dream, a dream shared by hundreds of thousands of other people their age: To make it in the hip hop world.
Against them: Hareesh is a skinny Indian lad who works in a pharmacy, and Patti is a white trash Jersey gal working two jobs to get her family out of debt. About as far away from Patti’s idol, hip-hop producer O-Z. Her mother, an ex-singer herself, wants her to work to pay for Nana’s medical bills.
For them: Patti can actually kind of rap. Or spit rhymes. Whatever the cool kids say these days.
Hareesh is a good hype stage man, and serves on backing vocals. But they need a producer. After a few failed attempts, they stumble upon Bob, aka Basterd the Antichrist. A black metal singer who lives in a hut and shuns modern society. After slowing down the tempo of his thrashing music by about 2000%, they find a groove. Along with Nana, they form the underground rap group PBNJ.

What follows is quite formulaic, to be honest. That’s the only big problem with the film — nearly every “twist” is predictable from a mile off. I don’t think I was seriously surprised by any scene from 20 minutes onward.
Yes, we’ve seen the story of the group of musical misfits who stumble along the way but eventually make it big in their final, epic performance. School of Rock, anyone? BUT, the movie is having so much fun along the way that it doesn’t matter much.
That’s helped by the cast, who give it everything. Danielle Macdonald is a real star, and throughout she gives a performance very much like her character’s performance at the end of the film — raw and exciting. The supporting cast really are there to support Killer P, and they do a great job.
The funny and uplifting moments are interspersed with more dramatic moments, and they work almost as well. Not quite as well, maybe I’m just a sucker for a crotchety grandma in a wheelchair throwing gang signs. But well. Killer P’s mother Barb is a washed up singer, which gives her extra reason to not support her daughter’s dream. Rather than just a bog standard bad parent, Barb has her reasons and is more sad than villainous.
In the case of Patti Cake$, it isn’t about the destination. And it isn’t even really about the journey — it’s a journey we’ve all seen before. It’s about who you’re with on the way.

