Can you feel it?

24 Hour Party People is the story of Factory Records and the Hacienda as told through the eyes of label co-founder and club owner Tony Wilson (played by comedian Steve Coogan). More than that, the film is a snapshot of music in Manchester from 1976 to 1992 'from the dawn of punk to the death of acid', says Wilson.

It is a testament to the people that put punk, new wave, indie and house music at the heart of Manchester, which in turn put Manchester in the minds of many elsewhere. It pays homage to the restless spirit that drove the punk and acid house movements to promote massive social change through song. It is about kids having fun and dancing their socks off while the rest of the world stands and stares.

24 Hour Party People succeeds where other dance films have failed, in giving us an insight into the creativity and inspiration behind the music. But this is a film about the people who orchestrated the club experience from behind the scenes, not the clubbers whose lives were touched on the dance floor.

Several films have tried to translate the clubbing vibe on to screen. Since Saturday Night Fever, movies have put prancing capers on celluloid in the hope of giving us that hotfooted feeling. More recently, The Last Days Of Disco attempted to recapture the Travolta-esque strut. Like hip-hop classics Breakdance and Wild Style, which painstakingly map out the moves, disco movies are a lesson in dance floor rules. At a rave, however, there are no rules. The acid house dance floor is a place where you completely lose yourself in the music, which requires a much greater effort to translate into cinema. Sitting in seat E, row 3, it's hard to feel you're immersed in a sea of people and able to forget everything but the beat.

Last year's SW9 came close to conveying the mayhem of clubbing, though the film overflowed with tired stereotypes and painted the dance floor as a dangerous, criminal place ? not a unifying environment where friends are made. Human Traffic remains the best example of a clubbing film to date. The characters live for the weekend, are consumed by the desire to abandon themselves to the rhythm of the dance floor and have a damn good time without entering a seedy, violent underworld. The film is self-referential and knowing.

Like Saturday Night Fever in the Seventies, Human Traffic (1999) was bang up to date and appealed to kids looking forward to a real Human Traffic weekend experience. 24 Hour Party People is more like The Last Days Of Disco in that it harks back to a golden age. As Wilson points out in the film, he is witnessing 'the birth of rave culture'.

Those who were there 'back in the day' will be hard pressed to resist a shudder of recognition when A Guy Called Gerald's 'Voodoo Ray' kicks in. For them it was never 'just' clubbing. Though many viewers will share with the film a sense of loss, they will also share its joy of being part of something important.

24 Hour Party People is about chasing dreams and losing them, catching something beautiful and it slipping through your fingers. Still, in the words of the poet it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Moments like punk or acid house, by their very nature, can't last forever, but 24 Hour Party People shows it's worth the effort, and half the fun's in trying.