Sunday, August 09, 2009

Slightly MIFFed.

Last night we go to the movies.

But no, we don't just go to any movie.
We got to the closing night of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

I'm not allowed to tell you how much this cost, but it was a fortune.

The film was the World Premiere of "Bran Nue Dae" - but we'll get to that later.

Got there with plenty of time to spare and there were people everywhere. Little or no sign of where we should go and queue, but there were numerous queues already. So we get told to go and wait in the queue that's snaking its way around Russell Street. Seriously? Hey buddy these tickets we got... they cost $@#... surely that means we get to just waltz up that red carpet there and walk straight in? No?

So we wait in a queue outside for some 40 minutes. Maybe more. Then we are herded into a cinema and any chance we had of sitting anywhere near the screen is to be laughed at. Needless to say this puts someone in a foul mood, which pretty much more or less puts me in a foul mood too, so F3$K YOU VERY MUCH MIFF.

And then, once all was said and done and the movie's finished to less than deserved applause we get herded out the back door exit into a dark laneway. It really felt like we had won the boobie prize for the night, and all for the pleasure of paying a ridiculous amount of money for sweet fark all.

And now onto the movie.

Now I've had to endure a whole bunch of questionable theatre in recent months. A certain someone's choice of Sunday night viewing has left (as I've documented before) me witness to films about the Holocaust, an endless Serbian nightmare (seriously that one went for close to four hours), and any number of absolutely useless and lame movie efforts.

But "Bran Nue Dae", the movie adaptation of an aboriginal musical has to go close to WORST MOVIE EVA.

I'm sorry, but it's true. Where to start? It's hard to know because there really was so much wrong with it.

Ummm... okay I'll start with the music. What a pile of steaming turd the music is. It's kinda American blues/roots without the blues or the roots. Every song is sung in an unmistakeably American way that makes you wonder if the film has been set in Broome or Alabama. The songs have little or no relevance to anything in the storyline, and the performances/arrangements and execution of each musical number is beyond lame.

Next, I guess that segues easily enough to the acting. Maybe I'm being harsh here, because this was after all supposed to be a musical, but the acting was pathetic. From the lead guy (the heart and soul of Broome, Mr Rocky whoever you are) if that's the heart and soul of Broome I think Broome may need a quadruple bypass. Everyone else was just a caricature (which I know, that's the point in a musical) but it all just missed by a million miles. Geoffrey Rush with his strung up German (making fun of German accents, seriously is this Australian Cinema in 2009?), Magda Szubanski playing the horny buxom outback shopkeeper (seriously, is this Australian Cinema in 2009??), and Missy Higgins attempting to play a heterosexual hippie (seriously, is this Australian Cinema in 2009????).

Oh, I maybe should have mentioned in with the music - the dancing. This was supposed to be a singing and dancing spectacular. So why did they have tap dancing scenes where the dancers weren't actually tapping? And did they choreograph the routines themselves on the fly, or did they have some thirteen year old from Eltham High who won second place in last year's Rock Eisteddfod help them out?

Next - the plot. Lame. Lamer than lame. And so many kinda fade backs to things that were supposed to be happening in some other time/place made the thing a train wreck of epic proportions that was almost impossible to follow.

Even the titles suffered from a failure of such magnitude that they already look dated. I mean this could have been made in 1972 and you wouldn't have noticed.

Prediction? This film will be heralded by the politically correct left as a landmark in aboriginal culture and Australian cinema. It will possibly win some domestic awards, and everyone involved will generally just masturbate themselves and each other into a lather and just believe that they can do no wrong.

But the reality is that this film is a stinker. It fails on just about every level. It will fail at the box-office. It will fail as an international release. It will lead to cries from the academic intelligentsia that Australian audiences are racist.

About the only thing this steaming pile of FAIL will achieve is that it will likely become some cliched cult sensation amongst the gay community, because they seem to go in for this kind of crap.

NO STARS.

1 comment:

Lilli boo said...

Fark your funny...loving this review...you should read Phillipa Hawker's review in The Age...that will get you going!