As generous and fleshed-out as its lead character, 25-year-old aspiring rapper Patricia Dombrowski (Australian actor Danielle Macdonald), aka Patti Cake$, aka Killa P, this first feature from writer/director/composer Geremy Jasper is a triumphant air punch of a movie. The fact that it is a formulaic underdog story – poor, white and podgy, Patti is not obvious rap star material – which dutifully hits all the required story beats, matters less than you would imagine. This is what feelgood cinema looks like and it’s plus-size, trashy and full of attitude.
Jasper brings a music video aesthetic of neon, graffiti and bling into a story that regularly trips out into Patti’s vivid daydreams. But the real strength of the film is in the writing. Not just the characters, but also the complex relationships between them: all are persuasively drawn. In particular, the troubled love that simmers between Patti and her hard-drinking mother (Bridget Everett) is abrasively credible. And Patti’s rhymes are sharp enough to convince us that she has a chance to make it and catchy enough that you might later have to have them surgically removed from your brain.
