Excellent but underrated film

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Blistering performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Since I had seen the "Lord of the rings"-trilogy I know and admire David Wenham. That's why I was so glad that "Better than sex" was shown on German TV now. Being a female I went into raptures at once watching David. He's handsome,sexy and not least a really fantastic actor! But I was rather disappointed about the movie's "flat taste" and in my opinion the movie shows some "porn-character". Nevertheless some elements (for example the scene when David thinks about the cake recipe trying to avoid the climax)were very funny and charming.But I had the impression,that ONLY mimic arts of our two great leads were able to show any slight hints of also other topics than sex. If David Wenham and Susie Porter hadn't done such a fantastic job the movie could have been considered as a lowbrow soft-porn,I guess. You needn't flash over all bed-scenes in a movie especially if sex is the main topic in a story, but I think that in this movie they were just..."too much". At the latest I was shocked about the scene in the bathtub! You may call me prudish and I emphasize that I still enjoyed watching David's nice body of course ;o), but that bathtub-scene (and some other)was rather tasteless in my opinion. I don't like the movie and it's style,but David Wenham-Fans of course will just HAVE TO watch that movie one time ;o)

Since you will have already read the plot by now, let me just say this movie was a lot of fun! I rate it much higher than the other folks on imdb.com The taxi driver, the refrigerator scene, and the final airport scene all brought big smiles to my face. Not a movie for the kids - see it with a close friend.

It's always instructive to watch films released no more than a year apart, tackling an identical subject, with many ideas in common, yet made in different countries and causally unrelated: take Australia's "Better Than Sex", and France's "A Pornographic Affair". It hurts to say it, but the French completely outclassed us. (AND they got in first.) But you don't have to see the French film to work out what's wrong with this one. English critic Cosmo Landsman put it best: "There's nothing here you couldn't learn by reading 'Cosmopolitan'."I have nothing against 'Cosmopolitan', but before starting work on a project like this you must decide if you wants to create a "How Compatible Are You?" quiz, or a work of art; its one or the other. They bathe the paper on which 'Cosmopolitan' magazines are printed in a kind of aesthetic disinfectant, and this film has gone through a similar process. The acting is good. It's the one feature of Australian films... And, I should admit, there's enough real humour to make it all wash down easily. But I got the uncomfortable feeling afterwards that I hadn't seen a movie at all. The taxi driver, who could have been a delightful fantasy element, was instead an embarrassingly naked cop-out, and that's what the device of interviewing the central protagonists turned out to be, too. Two films handled it much better: "When Harry Met Sally", and the French film. There was a point to the device in both cases. In "When Harry..." it's an outside-the-narrative device, placing the two central characters in the context of a larger world; in the French film, it's an INSIDE-the-narrative device, letting us know that the central characters have since reflected on the past. In "Better Than Sex" it's just a clumsy extravagance.

Dry Australian romantic comedy about a couple who start off as a one-night stand and end up soaked in romance. The whole film takes place in the girl's apartment, watching them trying to go their separate ways after every bout of raunchy sex but constantly unable to part. The nudity and sexual content will shock some, but for those desensitized like me it will just show through as a director's way of disguising the fact that he doesn't have a very interesting story to tell. Susie Porter and David Wenham as the couple, however, are very fresh and enjoyable to watch.