Patti Cake$ | What to Watch

(Image credit: © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Fi)

Hip-hop wannabe Patti (Danielle Macdonald) is white, and a tubby ginger, but will her talent for rhymes rise above these obstacles?

Hip-hop wannabe Patti (Danielle Macdonald) is white, and a tubby ginger, but will her talent for rhymes rise above these obstacles?

She also has to overcome sneering locals who call her Dumbo and a boozy slattern of a mother (Bridget Everett) who constantly belittles her dreams.

But the big girl’s big mouth could be enough to propel her out of her dead-end life in small-town New Jersey…

Music video director Geremy Jasper's underdog film hits some predictable beats along the way, but is rousing stuff all the same.

The characters are colourfully quirky, from Patti's oddball sidekicks – rapping Asian pharmacist Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay) and black death-metal-playing loner Basterd (Mamoudou Athie) – to Everett’s one-time hard-rock belter mom and wheelchair-user nana (Cathy Moriarty).

But the movie needs a convincing Patti to really work and Australian Macdonald absolutely nails the part with a performance that totally grabs the viewer from beginning to end.

This film premieres on Sunday 19 August.