Too much of everything

Strong and Moving!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

As much as this movie looked like a solid offering filled with laughs and an all star cast it ultimately ends up a complete mess of story lines and underdeveloped characters. It's filled with needless cutbacks that deliver nothing and scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor. A lot of scenes I just wondered whether the director was doing favours for mates who wanted a small speaking role to camera. While non linear story arcs are fantastic this one wasn't executed well and cut back and forth so many times whatever the story line is meant to be is not evident. What was the main plot line? Was it the whale, the swinging session, the young girl who would seem to be the focus of much of the movie but of whom we learn almost nothing, or the childhood movie that is apparently being made throughout the film? None of these otherwise acceptable plot lines went anywhere. The parents are all hideous people except maybe Jeremy Sims' character but again there's no real purpose or explanation to any of their motivations. Kylie is wasted in her role of a blubbering mess that completely unexplored. The teenage girl is written off as he street 'bike' and the other children engage in bratty behaviour with a side of animal cruelty. I was genuinely excited to see Julian McMahon in an Australian movie and really thought this would be an absolute treat but it just failed miserably. I gave it 4 stars but even that's probably too generous.

I really wanted this to be good. Worst Australian movie ever.

Energy abounds in this Aussie flick with lots of great set design and costumes to match and that's as far as it got for me. The rest was a bit of a dissapointment.Yes, I did expect a certain vulgarity to be present but some aspects of the narrative I just found just silly and at times plain stupid. Several minutes of voice over and fast cutting I found overwhelming at the start. There were some set pieces I found funny and was laughing along with the rest of the audience who were at times laughing more than I did, however it was these ridiculous parts of storyline that killed it for me. They kinda were absurd but the execution was where the word silly and stupid came in. Guy Pearce is always great but overall the cast's characters were not developed enough. Kylie Minogue and Jack Thompson's characters in particular were strangulated by the lack of thought given to them in the script. Mr Thompson's character just didn't go anywhere or vary. Not to blame him at all.....there was little heart in the characters overall. The sound mix however was well executed.

This film, like most Australian movies has a great potential for laughs and to some extent delivered in the first forty so minutes however once the swinging 'started' the laughs and to some degree, the films direction stopped. The costumes, vehicles and the whole style of the 70's was captured extremely well which makes it even more disappointing that the laughs just weren't delivered. It certainly isn't a Castle.