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Four out of Five stars
Running time: 75 mins

Hugely enjoyable, frequently hilarious mock-doc with a terrific central performance from Paddy Considine.

What's it all about?
Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee opens with director Shane Meadows (playing himself) knocking on the door of his friend Nicholas (Paddy Considine) and reminding him that they're making a film about him. Nicholas, who has renamed himself Le Donk, is attempting to become a manager and thinks that a documentary will be the perfect platform to showcase the skills of his young rapper friend Scor-zay-zee (Dean Palinczuk), or Scorz for short.

Fortunately, as an ex-roadie, Le Donk has a few connections in the music industry and somehow wangles Scorz a spot at a massive stadium concert in Manchester, opening for the Arctic Monkeys. Meanwhile, Le Donk's ex-girlfriend (Olivia Coleman) is heavily pregnant with their baby, but Le Donk finds it increasingly difficult to remain civil around her new boyfriend (Richard Graham).

The Good
Le Donk began life as a series of off-the-cuff shorts that Considine and Meadows used to mess around with in their spare time. (If the character reminds anyone of Steve Coogan's Saxondale, that's not exactly a coincidence – according to Meadows and Considine, Coogan was shown the shorts and pretty much ripped them off.)

Considine is utterly brilliant as Le Donk, delivering a surprisingly complex performance that allows you to see glimpses of the man underneath the act, even as he's playing up to the cameras. This culminates in an extremely funny scene where he's desperately putting on a nice guy act for both Olivia and the cameras, but finds himself getting increasingly wound up by the (largely inoffensive) new boyfriend.

The Great
Palinczuk is equally good and the contrast between Scorz's almost monosyllabic personality and his surprisingly impressive rapping skills is just one of many highlights. It's also fair to say that Meadows and Considine have the makings of one of the great director-actor partnerships, because between them, they make the whole thing look like a deceptively easy point-and-shoot exercise, whereas the reality is, one assumes, much more complex.

Worth seeing?
In short, Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee is a superbly directed, brilliantly acted mock-doc that's laugh-out-loud funny from start to finish. Highly recommended.