Fun, if not everyone\'s cup of tea

It\'s shameless and disarming, and there\'s a wild energy to both the performances and the direction that\'s quite infectious.

There\'s not much of a plot to Fat Pizza; it\'s just the misadventures of Bobo, the pizza chef, and his delivery boys Pauly, Sleek and Davo. It starts with Pauly, writer/director Paul Fenech, being afflicted with a bout of flatulence in a shopping mall - warning signals go up when a movie starts with fart jokes. It\'s true that Fenech and his team owe a debt to Hollywood gross-out comedies, but Fat Pizza, a spin-off from the SBS tv series, is distinctively Aussie in flavour and decidedly politically incorrect. Ramshackle and chaotic, the film hits out at a wide variety of targets and manages to make fun of boat people, refugee detention centers, Ivan Milat, Lebo bashing, Macdonalds, Indians, Italians, Lindy Chamberlain - you name it. It\'s shameless and disarming, and there\'s a wild energy to both the performances and the direction that\'s quite infectious. I especially liked the sense of humour behind the scene in which a Sydney cop is bashing a youth of Middle-East background and gives him a final whack, saying \"And that\'s for September 11.\" Fenech and his actors, Johnny Boxer as the chainsaw wielding momma\'s boy Bobo, Paul Nakad as Sleek, the Lebanese with an eye for beautiful women, and Jabba as newcomer Davo Dinkum, all enter into the spirit of the nonsense, and Sydney\'s western suburbs are convincingly depicted. In other words, this is a bit of a guilty pleasure.Comments by Margaret PomeranzI applaud the in-your-face attitude of the writing, I applaud the bravery that is inherent in Fat Pizza. I?m not sure that any of the performers are going to be nominated for an Oscar next year, but despite that there?s an exuberance in the film that comes from those performers. Like a lot of television adaptations to the screen it?s probably hard-pushed to take it to feature film status, but I love the fact that Fenech gives it a go. He?s such a hard-worker, such a pusher, such an in-your-face person that you have to really admire him. I think there?s an audience for this film, it may not be me, but I?m sure it?s out there.