Exit through the gift shop

Why is a person who paints graffiti ever called an "artist"? He (rarely a she) is just a self-absorbed mischief-maker, lacking even the political single-mindedness of the 1960s' "Ban the Bomb" wall-daubers. Maybe graffiti artists such as Britain's Banksy will eventually be a comical footnote in future histories of the excesses of the 20th-century capitalist system. The anonymous self-publicist has himself provided economic researchers with a case study.

His pseudo-documentary movie, Exit Through the Gift Shop (using the words daubed on one of Banksy's better-known art gallery send-ups) is marketed as "a Banksy film". It has given the self-confessed vandal an air of comic gravitas, nicely expressed by its voice-over narrator, Rhys Ifans.

Banksy, whoever he is (reportedly known only to be a Bristol-born man), has apparently made enough money from his stunts and can now afford to send up himself, his artistic genre, his fans and buyers in a pastiche of hand-held camera antics acting out a devilishly cute, complex and very nearly compelling set of tales about a Frenchman obsessed with so-called street art.

Banksy is a Borat of the art world, and has earned an additional fortune from this clever showcasing of a silly fad followed by fools with too much cash and too little taste subsidising Warhol wannabees.

The faux documentary's anti-hero is Thierry Gueta, a previously unknown French-born Los Angeles used-clothes shopkeeper who supposedly amassed more than a decade of amateur film recording the exploits and works of graffiti street artists. His video collection's one missing master artist was Banksy, whom he befriends by accident through mutual contacts. By the end of the film, affable Thierry has been transformed into megalomaniac pop artist Mr Brainwash (MBW) and disowned by Banksy and his graffiti pals. Mr Brainwash's self-produced first exhibition of stenciled art, prints and installations sells a million dollars' worth of mass-produced art, and the movie's audience has witnessed what appears to be an ultimate American dream of successful ambition, creativity and marketing.

The docudrama flows very well, the French character is delightfully egocentric and his works of street-style art are often amusing comments on modern society and contemporary art, its practitioners and purchasers. I was close to taking it seriously until Mr Brainwash breaks a foot bone prior to his exhibition's opening and gets carried around in a wheel barrow. Prior to that, I'd already had my doubts when the scale of MBW's cash investment in his project and staff became obvious. His previous ability to film notoriously secretive Banksy and the artist's nervous installation team at work, and to fly around the world with them, had already raised suspicious eyebrows.

The movie appears to be an intricately plotted PR stunt for Banksy and his new Mr Brainwash brand image, a second-tier product range designed to cater to less affluent art collectors who cannot afford real Banksys. The script provides enough clues (as in its characters' meaninglessly vague cross-references to each other) to its pretences, and more than enough hints that Banksy scorns the pretensions of folks who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

No writer is credited for the movie, or for the 13-minute "real" documentary about Banksy that's a DVD extra worth viewing. Look too at the Mr Brainwash website, and sense that Banksy hasn't finished having his last laugh at the expense of the art trade.