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Sunday, 12 September 2010

The Kings of Mykonos: Wog Boy 2


Writer / producer / star of Wog Boy 2 Nick Giannopoulos says in the press notes that originally this was going to be a stand-alone story, but then he decided this particular plot was a good way to bring back the original Wog Boy characters. Smart move: if this was a stand-alone movie then it'd be fair to say it's a massive and unwelcome return to the bad old days of Australian movie comedy, a film that you laugh at more than with, a film that plays its jokes so broad it's a wonder they fit on the screen - a film where, when one of the leads finally get the girl (though all he does is save her from drowning but that's as good a reason to pash as any) the donkey he was riding looks at the camera and winks. But as a sequel to the original Wog Boy, it's pretty much just more of the same.

The plot takes the two hold-overs from the first film - car-crazy Steve "Wog Boy" Karamitsis (Giannopoulos, who's performance consists largely of pulling a squinty face) and girl-crazy Frank (Vince Colosimo, who's performance is actually ok) - out of Melbourne's western suburbs and off to the Greek party island of Mykonos, where Steve may or may not have inherited a beach. While Frank starts out trying to break the Mykonos record of sleeping with 43 chicks in a month but ends up focusing on just one, Steve has to decide whether to sell to the sleazy property developer Mihali (Alex Dimitriades) or try to make a go of things himself against all the odds. Oh, and there's a subplot about goat shit.

There's the occasional funny moment but when the biggest laughs come from a pair of Germans basically saying they don't find the rest of the film funny you know you're in trouble. For all its many, many flaws the first Wog Boy at least was about the migrant experience and a clash of cultures (well, kinda): this doesn't really seem to be about anything past showing off Mykonos' impressive views.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #478)

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