P.J. Hogan's new film Mental follows in a tradition of quirky Australian suburban comedies. We take a look back at some of the funny and not-so-funny examples from over the years.
Probably only in Australia would audiences adore movies about a bloke who fixes dunnies and a family who refuses to leave their modest abode. Yes, there is something quintessentially Australian about the humour in Kenny and The Castle.
The suburban comedy has long been a staple of Australian cinema, yielding a sizable number of movies that deserve to be ranked as classics and more than a few that were neither amusing nor memorable.
By my reckoning, P.J. Hogan’s two films in the genre can’t be classed in the same category: Muriel’s Wedding is superbly crafted, top-shelf entertainment while Mental sits in the lowest echelon.
The suburban milieu is one of the most successful in Australian cinema. Asked why that’s the case, one veteran distributor tells SBS Film that’s “probably due to the fact that we have sucked at most other genres.”
But for every crowd-pleaser there have been at least one or more ineptly-made duds or cringe-making embarrassments. Shown a list of the films I judged among the worst in the oeuvre, one experienced producer said, “Your list brings back unpleasant memories.”
Here’s my highly subjective view of the best and worst in the genre...
The Rob-Sitch directed saga of the Kerrigan family and their fight to remain in their humble home was rated by Roger Ebert as “one of those comic treasures, like The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine, that shows its characters in the full bloom of glorious eccentricity. Michael Caton’s immortal line “Tell ‘em they're dreamin'” became an oft-repeated catchphrase. And talk about value for money: the budget was $20,000.
Mick Molloy co-wrote the screenplay and stars as Jack Simpson, a scam artist who joins the local bowls club. He’s forced to don the whites when the club is hit by injury and becomes an unlikely hero who helps save the club from falling into the clutches of John Clarke’s shonky pokie machine mogul. Frank Wilson as the club president and Bill Hunter as a maverick add to the fun.
Bruce Beresford’s adaptation of David Williamson’s play is a very funny and sharp-edged satire of Australian politics and suburban mores. John Hargreaves, Graham Kennedy, Ray Barrett, Pat Bishop, Harold Hopkins, Graeme Blundell and Candy Raymond are among the crackerjack cast as a group of friends who gather on election night in 1969 intending to celebrate the victory of Gough Whitlam’s Labor Party. The night didn’t turn out as planned in myriad ways.
The mockumentary about the put-upon portaloo plumber with a heart of gold made a star out of Shane Jacobson, who co-wrote the screenplay with brother/director Clayton, and gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘toilet humour’. The accents were so thick and the gags so colloquial the film was sub-titled in the US.
This satire of an ugly duckling who becomes a swan introduced Oz and the rest of the world to the talents of Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths and writer-director P.J. Hogan. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin was won over by Hogan's “gleeful, gaudy tribute to one ungainly misfit and her determination”.
Director Stephan Elliot (The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Welcome to Woop Woop, Easy Virtue) has never been noted for subtlety or finesse and he goes way over the top in this silly farce. The wedding between Brit Xavier Samuel and Aussie Laura Brent descends into chaos, egged on by his mates, her politician father Jonathan Biggins and uptight mum Olivia Newton-John. It’s hard to believe the writer, Dean Craig, wrote the far superior English comedy Death at a Funeral.
Martin Sacks and Joy Smithers play a battling Aussie couple living in a caravan who pursue the Australian dream of owning their own home in the outer suburbs, in director Denny Lawrence’s debut film which more resembles a TV sitcom than a fully realised feature. The barely coherent plot involving builders, real estate salesmen, a bank and busybody neighbours served mostly as a vehicle for a string of gags, most unfunny, weighed down by hammy performances from the supporting cast.
Like Muriel’s Wedding, P.J. Hogan’s film is set in a fictional Queensland town, focuses on dysfunctional parents and misfit kids and is based on events in Hogan’s childhood. There the similarities end: Mental is much darker and mean-spirited and there is no humour in the portrayal of various forms of mental illness, a reference to date rape and digs at lesbians, Aborigines and suburban stereotypes. Toni Collette struggles to make sense of the highly exaggerated Shaz, a pot-smoking, knife-wielding hippie who’s hired as a nanny to five troubled, unruly sisters.
Rolf de Heer has made some memorable movies in The Tracker, Ten Canoes and Bad Boy Bubby but he’s way out of his comfort zone with this black comedy. Dan Wyllie and Bojana Novakovic play a couple who move into a house and encounter the neighbours from hell: an unemployed cretin named King (Gary Waddell) and his menacing, drug-dealing pals nicknamed Shrek (Luke Ford) and Escobar (Anthony Hayes). It’s neither funny nor remotely credible.
The spin-off of Nick Giannopoulos’ 1987 stage show Wogs Out of Work and TV series Acropolis Now was a box-office hit, but boy oh boy, is it painful to watch for non-devotees of broad, unsubtle, corny humour revolving around ethnic stereotypes. Nick’s Steve Karamatsis is cheerfully unemployed and on welfare. After a prang with a limo carrying the federal minister for employment, he becomes an unlikely national hero and role model for the unemployed. The 2010 sequel The Kings of Mykonos: Wog Boy 2 was even worse.
Marc Gracie’s caper about two idiot friends, Jeffrey (Angus Sampson) and Philip (Nathan Phillips) who try to save their favourite TV show, a soap called Sons and Surf, from being cancelled was an Australian attempt at Dumb & Dumber/Beavis and Butthead/Wayne’s World-style knucklehead humour. It failed miserably.
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