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Matt Cooper praised by US critics for film about Dennis Rodman's bizarre North Korea trip

Today FM host Matt Cooper’s film about basketball star Dennis Rodman’s mad visit to North Korea looks to be a hit.

The radio presenter narrated Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang, which held its world premiere last night at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah.

And Hollywood industry bible Variety has given the Cork star a massive thumbs up – singing him out for praise.

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Visit: Matt in North Korea | TODAY FM

They say he “demonstrates an impressive ability to turn on a dime from whimsy to seriousness throughout”.

It also adds that the flick is “a deftly constructed, consistently engrossing and frequently flat-out-hilarious account of a controversial sporting event with geopolitical implications”.

The Last Word star travelled with the legend to Pyongyang last January for a basketball game he was arranging to celebrate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s birthday.

And Matt was among 14,000 people who watched the game between a selection of former NBA stars and the North Korean team.

Speaking in the documentary, he says watching Kim and ex-Chicago Bulls player Rodman meeting was a “strange sight” as they were “laughing and joking like a couple of old college buddies”.

Previously Matt said the reaction to the North Korean leader was just like when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland.

He revealed the “genuine” love for their dictator was the same as when the Pope delivered a sermon to more than a million people in the Phoenix Park in 1979.

He said: “It was spontaneous, and it did seem to be an outpouring of emotion. It was quiet extraordinary to see the enthusiasm with which they cheered and clapped.

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Trip over: Matt with Rodman | SKY

“But that said, it reminded me, would this ever happen in Ireland? We would never treat our political leaders in the way this dictator was being greeted.

“But then I had a flashback to when Pope John Paul II came to Ireland in 1979 – and it was almost that same outpouring of emotion and pure joy to see someone come amongst their midst.

“That was the sort of reaction they had to him, but that went on for a little while. At the end, when he got up to go as well, there was cheering and chanting. It seems genuine.

“It seems the population has been so brainwashed by the cult of leadership over the last couple of generations that this seems to be utterly spontaneous and utterly genuine.”

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