The Nugget

Aussie films are a lot easier to enjoy in theory than in practice. Case in point: The Nugget. In theory, this should be a winner. It's written and directed by Bill (Kiss or Kill) Bennett, it stars such heavy hitters of the local comedy scene as Stephen Curry and Dave O'Neil, and then there's the little matter of latest local-boy-makes-good success story Eric Bana taking the lead. Even the story sounds okay: three country town road workers - the unlucky Lotto (Bana), the super-lazy Sue (Dave O'Neil), and Wookie (Curry), so named because he claims to have once seen a Wookie in his back yard - like to spend their weekends away from it all 'prospecting' (that is, drinking beer) out on an old goldmining site. So when they stumble across the biggest gold nugget ever found, they rather stupidly figure they'll just hide it under Lotto's backyard and then try and buy up all the mining leases in the neighbourhood in case there's even more gold in them thar hills. Local sleazebag Ratner (Peter Moon) has other ideas, even as the trio's friendship starts to come apart under the stress of that much sudden wealth, and it's not long before they find themselves in a bigger hole than the one they dug to hide the nugget in. So far so good, especially with the three main leads all giving likeable (and very Aussie) performances. But this just isn't that funny. Okay, there are a few good gags here and there (and one, where a creepy old prospector - played by Max Cullen - says he'll sell his lease for 'the lives of the one you love the most' and then laughs hysterically for a good two minutes, is a classic), but otherwise this is a big collection of moments best described as 'nice'. The story isn't exactly a dramatic one either, and what twists there are aren't difficult to see coming. It's being promoted as a fable, and it works as one - but fables aren't all that funny, and they don't make for compelling viewing either.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #283)

Dirty Deeds

Noble failure isn't really a description that comes up too often when describing Australian films. Usually if a local product stinks, it stinks so badly it closes the cinema down for fumigation. Dirty Deeds is nowhere near that bad; it's just that it's never quite as good as it should be. The year is 1969, and the original AC/DC version of the title track is playing (close to a decade before it was recorded) as Barry Ryan (Bryan Brown) and his Sydney crime crew smash up an illegal back room pokies joint. Not because they're police, mind you - Ryan runs the casinos in Sydney, and his chief rival Freddie (Gary Waddell) just needed a little reminder of that. Meanwhile, Ryan's nephew Darcy (Sam Worthington) has just finished his tour of duty in Vietnam and has flown into Sydney looking for a job. Ryan's more than happy to show him the ropes, as well as his wife Sharon (Toni Colette) and his mistress Margaret (Kestie Morassi), who ends up being Darcy's next-door neighbour. If it wasn't bad enough that Freddie won't take no for an answer, leading to an attempted hit on Darcy that doesn't sit well with crooked cop Ray (Sam Neill), two Chicago mobsters have flown into town with expansion on their minds. Ryan decides to try and get on the good side of Tony (John Goodman) and Sal (Felix Williamson) with a big party, but when he knocks back their offer to buy him out, everyone knows that trouble's brewing. Well, everyone but Darcy, who's too busy falling for Margaret to realise exactly how much danger he's putting himself in... This ends up being a pretty good re-creation of 60's Sydney for the money, but that's the only real success here: under-written characters and the occasional flat performance mean this attempt at a large-scale crime drama never really takes off. The huge range of double-dealings that fill the film's second half never really go anywhere, and while it is fast-paced and stylish enough to ensure that this effort by writer / director David Caesar is never boring, it never comes together as a complete success either. See Dirty Deeds on the cheap.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #277)

He Died With a Felafel in His Hand

John Birmingham's loose collection of share-house anecdotes He Died With a Felafel in His Hand was a surprise (and surprisingly enduring) hit on the Australian literary scene. Whatever it was that made the book so successful, the movie definately doesn't have it; even the addition of something close to an actual plot feels more like a loss than a gain. Not that it's much of a plot: would be writer Danny (Noah Taylor) is living in Brisbane in his 47th share house. The quirky residents of the house go about their business peacefully enough - when they're not belting cane toads with golf clubs or setting fire to the dishes in the sink - but the arrival of Anya (Romane Bohringer) signals nothing less than the total destruction of the house and the lives of those in it. Share house 48 for Danny is in a thinly drawn Melbourne (it rains all the time and the cops shoot people is the extent of the insight here), and share house 49 (Sydney) brings the love triangle between Anya, Danny, and Sam (Emily Hamilton) to a head. This strips most of the quirky stories out of Birmingham's book and replaces them with not a hell of a lot, and it shows in the performances. Noah Taylor had relocated to London by the time the production was up and running: judging by his performance here (of an admittedly subdued character) he could have just mailed a photo of himself back and let it play the part. Worse, the jokes aren't funny, the sense of the bizarre found in the book only appears during the Brisbane sequence, and the love triangle itself is just plain dull. What makes the book so fun is that everyone in it is up to some wacky and / or insane adventures; the characters here have little to say, take forever to say it, and don't even seem like they mean it. Your mates down the pub have funnier and more truthful stories about share living to tell than the ones on offer here.

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte#254)

Mall Boy

Fifteen year-old Shaun (Kane McNay) spends his life hanging out at the local shopping mall with his mates, dodging his social worker, and spending as little time as possible at home. Fair enough too - his two sisters spend their time swearing, mostly at each other, while inbetween drinks and swearing at her daughters his mother (Nell Feeny) tries to do her best but has no idea what that is. At least his dad (Brett Swain) is out of prison, but the welcome home party turns into a punch-up when dad brings his girlfriend around, and he doesn't seem that interested in having Shaun around anyway. Often blackly funny (if laughing at bogans is your thing, this is the must-see movie of '01) but also surprisingly powerful in its' depiction of aimless youth, Mall Boy manages to avoid the social drama cliches we've come to expect to instead deliver a spot-on look at a depressingly pointless way of life. Musician turned writer / director Vincent Giarrusso (from The Underground Lovers) has definitely made himself a name to watch in film with this one.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte)

The Wog Boy

It's not exactly a surprise that a movie made by the team behind Wogs Out Of Work and the countless related spin-offs (including the TV show Acropolis Now) should end up being titled The Wog Boy. What is surprising is that there's more to this than a bunch of stereotype-based jokes: sure, Steve (Nick Giannopoulos) is a self-confessed 'wog boy', complete with hotted-up Valiant, Travolta-inspired moves with his fellow chick magnet Frank (Vince Colosimo) down the night clubs, and a childhood spent playing on a concrete garden. When a trip down to the dole office leads to a fender-bender with the evil employment minister (Geraldine Turner), it's not long before Steve's being attacked by a national current affairs show (hosted by Derryn Hinch) as "the nation's biggest dole bludger". Steve's wog boy charm turns his follow-up appearance on the show into a triumph as he goes from bludger to battler - exactly the kind of person the employment minister needs to launch her own final solution to the unemployment problem... They've gone out of their way to broaden this film's appeal beyond those viewers with first-hand experience of multi-cultural bingo matches and "the curl gets the girl" approach to clubbing, and for the most part it works: showing politicians as liars is always a winner (especially if they're sex-crazed to boot), and bagging the tabloid media isn't going to lose them any friends either. But it's still the wog jokes that work the best (you'll be lucky to hear a lot of the dialogue over the laughs), and the constant swinging between ethnic humour, political satire, romance (both Frank and Steve find true love), and some moments of serious drama leaves this a bit all over the place. Think of The Wog Boy as a Four Corners pizza: not all of it's going to be to your taste, but somewhere in there is something you're definitely going to like.

Anthony Morris (this review appeared in Forte #213)

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

Once Were Warriors wasn't really the kind of film that demanded a follow-up, and despite featuring some of the same characters What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? isn't exactly a sequel. Jake the Muss (again played by Temuera Morrison) might have a new girlfriend (Edna Stirling), but he's still out there boozing on and causing fights even as his son Nig (Julian Arahanga) is killed in a set-up by his own gang. Nig's girlfriend Tania (Nancy Brunning) teams up with Nig's brother Sonny (Clint Eruera) to avenge his death, and when Jake refuses to help they get involved with a rival - and just as evil - gang. Meanwhile Jake's life is again on the skids as his erratic behaviour alienates family and friends, and it's not until he hit rock bottom that he realises helping Sonny may be his salvation - if he's not already too late...

The big difference between this film and the original is that Warriors actually had something to say about Maori society; this is just the continuing adventures of Jake the Muss, and his gradual redemption is nowhere near as powerful as his fall was in the first film. Without the savage energy of Warriors (despite the occasional nasty bashing) and a story that's a gang-warfare shadow of the original, even a collection of good performances can't save this from being something of a disappointment. What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? isn't a bad film - it's just no Once Were Warriors.

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte#198)

Babe: Pig in the City

By now pretty well everyone, young or old, knows the story of Babe the sheep pig. Not a whole lot of films have been as popular and successful as Babe, and you could count on one hand all the sequels to those films that've lived up to the original - without using all your fingers. So no matter how much you want Babe: Pig In The City to be good, it's hard not to take a "hope for the best, expect the worst" approach - and it's a film that lives up to expectations far more than hopes.

The story follows on directly from the first film, as after Babe's triumph at the local show, life settles back to it's usual sedate pace at the Hoggett's farm until Farmer Hoggett (James Cromwell) is injured in a Babe-instigated well repair accident. It's up to Mrs Hoggett (Magda Szubanski) to keep things running, but when the bank sends the boys 'round to foreclose on the mortgage, she has to pack Babe up and take him to the city to try and save the farm. But the city's a pretty big place, and when Babe gets separated from his human he's left alone to deal with homeless pets, a monkey circus act, and some pretty savage guard dogs as he tries to help his new friends and save his home.

First, the good news: Babe: Pig In The City is never really boring, and the much-talked about 'darker' tone is nowhere near as bad as some have suggested. But apart from that, there's no denying that this just isn't up to the original's (admittedly high) standards. Okay, the film does skilfully transfer the original's fairy-tale feel to the big city and the effects are first rate, but the new characters are muddled, Babe spends most of the film doing nothing, the plot wanders aimlessly (the saving the farm angle is all but forgotten), and for the most part the laughs just aren't there. It's not a complete failure, but after this lacklustre effort, Babe's next starring role is probably going to be in your local Safeway's deli counter.

Anthony Morris

(this review appeared in Forte#182)