That was an excellent one.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The cringe factor is definitely back in New Zealand cinema. This could have been a fantastic story (in fact, the book was.) Betrayal. Blackmail. Dysfunctional characters. Humour. Intrigue. Murder.But somehow it just didn't hold together. The characters were too stereotypical and evoked too much cringe factor (with the exception of Jemaine Clement's Spook, who injected some genuine fun into the film.) The script lacked a vision for capturing the darkness of the themes of the film (or conversely lacked sufficient humour to make up for the lack of darkness.) Overall it was too light hearted for the themes covered in the story - a story of blackmail, revenge and murder. Such a story required a liberal dose of black humour, but the script barely delves into somewhat-grey humour.There are genuinely funny moments. But overall it was a disappointment and a missed opportunity to translate Morrieson's dystopian world to the screen.

Saw this last night and it was a massive disappointment. First of I wanted to say that I think Stutter is a talented director, in terms of his visual skills - as the art direction and camera work was first rate. However the story, and casting was a major let down and left a lot to be desired. Like any young director Stutter needed to hit some what of a home run, to get another chance at bat - but after seeing this film I think that he'd struggle. It's been just over a week now since it's release and it's almost finished it theatrical run in Auckland. Which is another way of saying, this is a major box office flop - anyone who says otherwise is in dreamland. The choice of story, just struck me as weird. Why as a young director would you choose an obscure local novel, set decades ago as the basis of your first flick? Surely he could have found something more relevant. Clement had some moments, but the other two leads weren't strong enough to carry the story. Overall I thought it wasn't funny enough to be comedy, and not interesting enough to work as a crime drama.

Ronald Hugh Morrieson's novel Predicament is a humorous, dark tale of the seedy underbelly of a small New Zealand town. This movie keeps the humour and tone of the book while also adding to it a modern freshness to make it relevant to today's audience.The lead cast all turn in excellent performances, not only to give the movie a great dramatic feel but also to deliver truly comedic moments that lighten what could otherwise, at times, be a pretty dark tale. Hayden Frost is perfect as Cedric, the awkward, friendless, and yet good- hearted teenager. Heath Franklin delivers a great performance as Mervyn, a manipulative and at times slightly threatening bludger. Tim Finn provides some special moments as Cedric's befuddled dad. But for many the highlight will be Jemaine Clement's creepy and yet deeply funny Spook. A great script and terrific performances aside, this movie also looks fantastic. The art direction and costume design are impressively stylish and make the 30s look like a pretty cool time to be around. On top of this, the cinematography delivers a movie with lush colours and, at times, a darkness that is just perfect for the tone of the movie.I thoroughly enjoyed my night out seeing this movie during the film festival, and the rest of the audience did too. This movie is bound to become a New Zealand classic and must be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated.

Ronald Hugh Morrison's novel 'Predicament' is a black comedy, a coming of age yarn of carnal knowledge (involving a schoolgirl), blackmail and murder. Set in the New Zealand in the '30s, the novel is infused with small-town seediness and repressed sexuality. Director/writer Jason Stutter shies away from this, neutering the story into inoffensive blandness, that feels closer to 'The Goonies' than 'Chinatown'.Stutter didn't exactly win the audience over at the gala premiere at the NZ Film Festival when he stated that he doesn't read much because he '...can watch forty films in the time it takes to finish a novel'. Still, adapting local literature has always been the easiest path for the venal to glean a few million dollars out of various funding bodies (did anyone pay to see the undercooked turkey that was last year's adaptation of 'Under the Mountain?). Watching 'Predicament', its obvious that he has no affinity for the material. Thus, his choice for his first 'real feature' gives off the stench of being merely a stepping-stone on his career path.The film is another ho-hum example of simply watching a storyboard filmed. It's a tedious sequence of badly sketched characters bounded in boxes. It highlights all the hallmarks of an amateur with delusions of auterism. "Predicament' is a catalogue of all the laziest contemporary tricks-of-the-trade; from the pointless Cinema-scope lensing (why? because Tarantino always frames in it, of course!), the constant camera movement (crane swoops down at the drop of a hat) and the bland, yet ever-present score (Plan 9 trot out trombones and xylophones), its the hollow artifice of stale technique trouncing the audience to not fall asleep. Never once, throughout all this visual Sturm and Drang does the story connect with its audience.Stutter utterly fails to convey a sense of time and place. He's so disinterested in the morals of the era and the vernacular of time, that at one point a character utters "You better harden the f*** up!". Its a cringe-inducing tip of the hat to the Guy Ritchie school, but not nearly so tragic as an earlier 'homage' (groan!) to 'Reservoir Dogs'. For Stutter, cinema was born in the 1980's. He's a total square, and like so many of his peers, actually stepping outside of the square is not a career option.The director is a 20-something prude. His screenplay performs a literal vasectomy upon the novel. Here is a writer so bereft of balls, that he visualises a sex scene as a pair of female legs kicking the air... replete with off-screen moaning. The material needs a Verhoven, not a shrinking violet virgin. Here is so milquetoast a director, that he climaxes an off-screen decapitation by...tracking into the screaming mouth of the woman who witnessed it. Being hackeneyed is too good for this hack .The worst is saved for last. The novel's climax is a frittered affair, but consulting his preferred bed-side reading tome, (screen-writing guru Syd Field's bible on How-To-Construct-a-Screenplay, perchance?), Stutter- the writer who doesn't read much, 'ties up all the threads' and achieves 'resolution' in the most trite fashion (as dictated by Field's soulless formulae of cliché). It's risible, and how wretched it is, to suffer through the dull spectacle of a director ticking off a check-list -('turning point'-Tick!...) when all one wanted was a for story to unfold or to be mildly entertained. Watching this adaptation is like paying to watch an illiterate spitting on Morrison's grave...after the polite applause died off, (which was well before the kowtowing "Extra Special Thanks to Sir. Peter Jackson..." credit), the audience shuffled out. At these events, the standard response mustered from the unimpressed is a tactful "Well, it wasn't TOO bad...". Yet, after 'Predicament', not a single person I spoke to had anything positive to say. The consensus was that the film never connected, the actors never stood a chance, their characters never came to life on-screen.I predict box office death for this cynically produced, misguided mess.