For Your Consideration? Exit Through the Gift Shop

Firstly, sorry for the lack of postage this last week! Life has got in the way, however I'm back in business now, with some Banksy.

Frankly, Exit Through the Gift Shop is the film world's biggest advert since FedEx turned up in every other shot in Robert Zemeckis' Castaway. It's not a documentary about one man trying to unlock the myth of street artist Banksy, it's an advert for at the very least, the countercultural attitude Banksy claims to represent, or, more likely, an advert for Banksy himself.

And subsequently the main thrust of the film is somewhat lost, not to mention dull. It claims to be about Thierry Guetta, a filmmaker turned street artist, who has an obsessive compulsive relationship with the camera, filming every aspect of his life (from making breakfast to having a wee).

He accidentally stumbles upon street artists in his adopted home town of LA and follows them around, claiming he's making a documentary. He's not making a documentary, he just stores the footage in shoeboxes in his spare room. It's only when he hears of Banksy that he decides to put his footage together into a feature.

For me, there are too many celebrity cameos (even if they are in context), too much of a knowing wink and too many moments which don't ring true enough for this to be diverting. Perhaps it's all for real, and I'm just a cynical curmudgeon. And perhaps I was disappointed that there wasn't very much Banksy in it (there really is only a smattering, buried in the middle of the film). But it's not well rounded enough as a documentary to leave me satisfied on any level.

If it gets the Oscar, I'll leave a brown smear on the streets of Oxford.