Based on a short novel by Colleen McCullogh this slight, modest movie is a kind of fairytale about the possibilities for middle-aged romance. In it, a very beautiful American called Mary, deep into the dark side of 40, played by Piper Laurie, falls for an improbably good looking gardener impersonated by Mel Gibson. This set up only proves that there’s not that much formal difference between airport novel romance and soft-core porn. Of course the films major plot gimmick and indeed the source of its heated, soap opera style melodrama is the fact that Gibson’s Tim is 'slow".
Worried that Tim might be subject to sexually and emotional exploitation his sister, Deborah Kennedy and mum and dad, Pat Evison and Alwyn Kurts, do a lot of fretting out loud.
This was a pet project of Michael Pate, who, in the 40shad a career in Hollywood and ended up being a major figure in TV in Australia in the 60s and thru into the 80s. Indeed Tim is a style-free zone cinematically (and it has the classic hallmark of Oz company Crawford productions, whereby there are a lot of shots of people getting in and out of vehicles for no apparent reason).
Still, for all its clunkiness it’s not such a bad film (in a telemovie kind of way). Gibson is fine and Laurie is very good as are the supporting characters and its all played with a deadly sincerity. The strange part is that, for a movie about a kind of sexual liberation, it is somewhat chaste"¦ apart from a very modest bed scene (bare shoulders, long looks) all Tim and Mary seem to do is kiss, hold hands and run along the beach"¦
