Australian Tumbleweeds
Line? Line?
Press release time!
Media Release: Monday October 17, 2016
Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia
Premieres November 27 only on The Comedy Channel
Foxtel’s local version of the much-loved comedy series, Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia will launch exclusively on The Comedy Channel Sundays from November 27 at 7.30pm.
Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia is a fresh and fun take on the popular original series’ from the UK and the US with a fantastic mix of experienced and new improv performers. Expect the unexpected when the quick-witted cast tackle the various improv challenges thrown at them each week.
Host Tommy Little is joined by seven exciting and talented ensemble cast members – comedy superstar Rhys Darby, stand-up festival favourites Cal Wilson, Tegan Higginbotham and Susie Youssef, along with world-class improviser Steen Raskopoulos, and newcomers Bridie Connell and Tom Walker.
In each of the ten episodes four of the cast will perform improv sketches together thrown at them by host Tommy Little and suggestions from the audience with no-one knowing where they will end up. The performers get themselves into insane situations with improv challenges often demanding singing and dancing – but most importantly they must deliver the jokes. The host then awards various amounts of points – that don’t even matter – to the best players and funniest sketches.
Ten-part series Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia was filmed in front of a live audience in Melbourne with house band led by Kit Warhurst. Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia is Executively Produced by Kevin Whyte, Guesswork Television, and Craig Campbell, +61 TV exclusively for Foxtel. The Australian series premieres Sundays from November 27 at 7.30pm only on The Comedy Channel.
thecomedychannel.com.au
Eh, it’s kinda hard to get all that excited about this – despite what the press release says, “fun and fresh” does not seem to be the words to use about this revival of a “much-loved” format – but in a way that’s kind of the point. The Australian television comedy ecosystem is so threadbare that it’s constantly having to re-introduce the most basic elements required for survival, and in this case that means a cheap and cheerful improv show where just maybe someone will catch fire and grab the public’s imagination. Or perhaps just literally catch fire, we don’t know what kind of improv games they have planned.
Just because there’s almost nothing to get excited about here doesn’t mean reviving Whose Line is it Anyway? is a bad thing; far from it. This is exactly the kind of basic comedy program Australia needs to be making three or four times a year if we’re ever going to find people who can work their way up the television ladder and eventually create something that isn’t part of the current ABC line-up.
It’s just not something that, the presence of a house band aside, we’re currently champing at the bit to watch.
New Beginnings in Rosehaven and Upper Middle Bogan-land
You can see the logic in sandwiching Rosehaven between Upper Middle Bogan and The Last Laugh – established, popular favourites help launch the newcomer – problem is, unfamiliar, slow-paced Rosehaven’s such a contrast to the well-established characters and fast-moving storylines of Upper Middle Bogan that it looks less good than it possibly is. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell after just one episode.
Upper Middle Bogan starts with the Brights moving to a much-anticipated new home which Danny has designed. This is his meisterwerk, a house of such architectural brilliance that an import only magazine is coming to interview him about it. But when the rest of the family finally clap eyes on it, Danny’s minimalist dream home quickly goes from much-anticipated to irritating, wanky laughing stock to something each member of the family thinks they can improve upon, with amusing results.
By the end, the house is almost a character in its own right. Something that along with Brianna’s quest to get onto reality TV with her partner Younis should provide laughs-a-plenty for the rest of the series. In contrast, Rosehaven, like the sleepy rural town it’s set in, took a more relaxed pace when it came to setting up characters, plots and laughs for the future.
When we meet best friends Emma and Daniel, they’re about to move out of their shared flat in inner-city Melbourne as she gets married and he moves back to his hometown in rural Tasmania to help out at his Mum’s run real estate agency. They’re both full of hope and optimism for their new lives, but within days, possibly within hours, of Emma’s Bali honeymoon kicking off, she realises she’s made a mistake and, not keen to face her family just yet, she flies to Tasmania and surprises Daniel just as he’s coming to terms with the fact that he’s back in the rural town he gleefully escaped a decade ago, trying to run a small business that he doesn’t know how to run. Oh, and some of his Mum’s tenants used to bully him at school, and he really doesn’t know how to deal with them.
As a set-up to a fish-out-of-water sitcom goes, this is textbook. Except, sometimes, it’s hard to know where this is heading and who the main players are. The townsfolk we meet are the standard mix of mildly eccentric rurals, but we don’t spend long enough with them to get a sense of whether we’ll meet them again or not. Similarly, Emma and Daniel are pretty nothing characters. Sure, they have a lot of smart ‘n’ sassy US-comedy-type exchanges, but it’s difficult to get sense of why they’re such good friends. This isn’t Seachange inland or Housos gone rural (phew!) but perhaps it would be better if it was: at least those shows were good at establishing themselves in episode 1.
Will Rosehaven sustain interest over the coming weeks? Hard to tell. But as first episodes go this wasn’t a stand-out. And, consequently, episode two doesn’t feel like a must watch (although we will watch it). Upper Middle Bogan on the other hand, with its well-established character dynamics and good writing, is more than welcome back on our screens.
Kick to Kick
Press release time!
Footy season may be over but new ABC TV series is just warming up
Lisa McCune, John Howard and Vince Colosimo to join exciting new Indigenous cast
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 — ABC TV, Screen Australia and Film Victoria announced today that filming has commenced in Melbourne on THE WARRIORS, a provocative new 8 x 30’ Indigenous comedy drama series.
Created by Tony Briggs (The Sapphires) and Robert Connolly (Paper Planes, Barracuda), THE WARRIORS is set in the world of Australian Rules Football. It explores the elite world of professional sport through the eyes of two new recruits – plucked from obscurity to fame and fortune – and two established players as they are thrown together in a share house in Melbourne.
With temptation at every turn and a lot of football, there’s no guarantee these young men will run through the banner for the first game of the season.
After a nationwide casting search, 18 year old Gordan Churchill will make his acting debut as Maki, the number one draft pick. Gordan was discovered in the remote Indigenous community of Warnum in the Kimberley Region. The series also introduces WAAPA graduate Nelson Baker as Zane, the number five draft pick.
Lisa McCune is the team’s tireless communications manager, Vince Colosimo is Coach Mark ‘Spinner’ Spinotti charged with getting the wooden spooners back in finals contention. Club president, footy legend Bill Shepherd, is played by John Howard, returning to the world of Australian Rules Football after starring in the 1980’s classic The Club.
Comedian Ben Knight is Scottie who is returning from his third knee reconstruction, and Reece Milne (Home and Away) plays Doc, the seasoned team-captain charged with showing the rookies the ropes. Newcomer Tasia Zalar is Zane’s sister Ava, who joins the boys to try out for the women’s league.
“What attracted us to this project was both the concept of following four mischievous footballers experiencing the highs, lows and often funny situations of life as an elite athlete, as well as the opportunity for Indigenous creatives to partner with highly regarded practitioners and accelerate along their career trajectory” said Penny Smallacombe, Head of Indigenous at Screen Australia.
“Film Victoria is delighted to be supporting the team behind The Warriors and also providing skills development opportunities for a number of Victorian Indigenous screen practitioners” said Jenni Tosi, CEO at Film Victoria.
“The Warriors is a wild ride that sees our characters teeter between temptation and dedication with the added layer of cross-cultural relations. It’s brilliant to be able to deal with this subject matter through a no-holds-barred comedy” said Sally Riley, the Head of Scripted Production.
THE WARRIORS is a landmark Australian television project, exclusively written and directed by some of the country’s finest Indigenous talent including Jon Bell (Cleverman), Tony Briggs (The Sapphires) and exciting newcomer Tracey Rigney. Directed by Adrian Russell Wills (Wentworth), Beck Cole (Black Comedy), Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, Redfern Now) and straight from a director’s attachment on Alien: Covenant with Ridley Scott – Catriona McKenzie (The Circuit, Redfern Now and The Gods of Wheat Street). Produced by Arenamedia with John Harvey.
THE WARRIORS will air on ABC in 2017.
Obviously this is very good news. Australia (and the ABC) needs more local production, the concept sounds halfway decent* and the talent behind it is strong – we’ll be there opening night for sure. But is it good comedy news?
Putting aside the fact it’s hard to know if it came through the comedy department – “Sally Riley, the Head of Scripted Production” oversees scripted Comedy, but also Fiction, Children’s and Indigenous (which she used to run, and where she was involved in Black Comedy, Gods of Wheat Street, 8MMM Aboriginal Radio, Redfern Now and Cleverman) – this seems a lot closer to the ABC’s lengthy tradition of lightweight drama than it does something that’s actually all that hilarious.
You know what we mean: the lead is basically played straight while the more occasional the role the nuttier the character becomes. It’s a story where a fish out of water is constantly doing that “comedy react” thing as they are plunged into a crazy world full of knockabout comedy characters. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be impressed at the way it tackles important issues, etc.
“But geez, Tumbleweeds,” we hear you ask, “they literally describe it as a “no-holds-barred-comedy” – what more do you ungrateful bastards want?” Um, maybe a production team with a track record in comedy? Tony Briggs and Robert Connolly have made and appeared in more than their fair share of decent drama and they’re a large part of the reason why we’ll be tuning in but comedy? The Sapphires had Judith Lucy, but past that…
We’ll say it again because we know our rep as haters often means people don’t bother to read everything we write: this looks like an exciting production and it’s one we’re excited about. But c’mon: if you’re making a “comedy drama”, don’t then go on to call it a “no-holds-barred-comedy”. And if you think promoting a lightweight drama as a comedy is the best way to get people excited about a show, why don’t you just make more comedies?
*this’ll be a good test of a theory held by one of us that the reason why Australia loves sport but seems largely disinterested in dramas (or comedies, or quiz shows) about sport is because a): the people who love sport can simply just watch actual sport (and shows looking behind the scenes at sport), and b): the people who don’t love sport have so much sport rammed down their throats simply by living in Australia that they have zero interest in watching a drama or comedy about sport.
The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow
Anyone else noticed that Australian television comedy has been close to stone dead over the last month or so? Sure, HYBPA? keeps on ticking and Soul Mates popped up there for a while but otherwise? Very quiet indeed. And when there’s no comedy there’s not much to write about, as our collection of increasingly erratic and barely on-topic posts over the period has no doubt shown.
As for why things have been so grim, well, it’s always a very minor pleasure when we’re proven right about something, but it seems like we may have been on the money when we pointed out that the ABC’s comedy output in 2015 was being bolstered by shows – 8MMM and Maximum Choppage come to mind, though Please Like Me probably counts too – that were originally scheduled for ABC2, and that when they ran out in 2016 the cupboard was going to look very bare indeed.
Without those shows, and with an understandable programming strategy of grouping their original comedy output into blocks so they’ll boost each others ratings, and without any cheap & cheerful series they can let run for three or four months – remember How Not to Behave? Dirty Laundry Live? – it seems that the ABC at current funding levels simply can’t afford to keep up a consistent comedy presence throughout the year.
Though speaking of funding models, some good news:
The first comedy from the ABC Comedy Showroom to win a full season is Ronny Chieng: International Student.
It will air on both ABC and Comedy Central in the US.
Chieng, currently a correspondent on The Daily Show, revealed the news in a podcast with the UK’s Des Bishop.
Asked about his background as an immigrant to Australia, he said, “Tune it to ABC or Comedy Central US. June 2017. My new series addresses it.”
We’re pretty excited about this, as we were big fans of the pilot:
Is It Funny? We laughed a lot. Ronny Chieng’s got a good eye for highlighting stupidity and pomposity, and this compliments Declan Fay’s spot-on skewering of Aussie bloke culture (always one of our favourite elements of The Sweetest Plum).
Should It Get A Series? There’s a lot of potential for a series, here, with Ronny and his gang of the fish-out-of-water international students pitted against the poshos, baffled by Aussie culture and student traditions, and running into a variety of other weird and wonderful university characters. We’d like to see more from Anthony Morgan’s wrestling-obsessed law professor, and Felicity Ward’s postgraduate student, driven so mad by her research that she doesn’t seem to have left the library for years, but mainly we like this because it’s one of the best piss-takes of university life and Aussie culture we’ve seen for a long time.
And we’re also not that surprised that it seems to be a co-production with Comedy Central, which is usually code for “the US is stumping up all the cash to actually make it”:
Comedy Showcase only went to air as a way for the ABC comedy department to get cheap programming by airing pilots: after two years of Fresh Blood – the winners of which all seem to basically be financed by the online arm of US networks, which tells you how much actual investment the ABC is putting into making new comedy – why would they run a totally separate competition to find a completely new show they’d then have to pay money to make?
(that said, if a US network decided they wanted to put money into any one of those pilots the same way they did Please Like Me or Soul Mates, then we’d see them on air in a heartbeat)
So we’re a little torn. It’s great news that the best of the Comedy Showcase pilots is actually going to series (though what happened to the audience voting side of things that was supposedly part of the deal?), but what if the best pilot had turned out to be from a comedian who wasn’t already working for a US network? Would we still have seen their show getting the thumbs up, or are we in a place where without US money the ABC simply can’t afford to greenlight new comedy series?
Because that doesn’t seem very funny at all.
The Return of Bazura
Ok, so it’s not all-new episodes of the much-loved movie-based comedy program The Bazura Project, but it’s close: the Bazura team have finally got their website up and running and it’s a doozy.
We shouldn’t be surprised really. The Bazura Project always was a show that took a fairly obsessive view of a subject much-loved by obsessives, and the fact they never got to put a DVD out back when just about every other Australian comedy – even fellow Channel 31 stablemates like The Shambles and… that quiz show comedy where they gave away meals from a food truck or something… is a real shame. Commentary tracks!
This website goes a very long way towards making up for that lack. We’re fairly sure that “making-of” clip about how they did the opening credits to their “Guide to Sinema” (their ABC2 series and the only one not hosted on their site) is all new. Plus there’s enough behind-the-scenes stuff – not to mention all the episodes we only ever saw in blurry crap-o-vision because C31 reception was rubbish where we were a decade ago (by which we mean, a decade ago we were in an Australia without digital television) – to keep everyone but the most hardcore of fans stumbling over new (to them) clips.
Old movie news and reviews of old movies may not be your thing. We’re not entirely sure it’s our thing and we bought a copy of the collected reviews of Anthony Lane from a $2 book shop (it’s great toilet reading, seriously). But there’s also a whole lot of jokes and the thrill of watching a show get steadily better (or worse if you watch the episodes in reverse order). Also, it’s free Australian comedy and you can never have too much of that.
So that’s five stars from me David, which is also the most annoying film-related “joke” in Australian culture.
Love Gone Wrong
The Wrong Girl, aka Channel Ten’s latest attempt to force drama and comedy to breed together, is probably the closest the network is going to get to a sitcom any time soon. Lacking the dramatic heft of Offspring – c’mon, John Edwards and Asha Keddie are basically the Scorsese and Streep of Australian TV drama – or the quirky plotting of Mr & Mrs Murder, story-wise this is chick lit by the numbers. Our heroine falls over twice in the first ninety seconds; we’ve got nothing against pratfalls but maybe space them out a little, ok?
That’s not to say we didn’t get a laugh or two out of the first episode. “Based on an original book by Zoe Foster” was a pretty good one, considering the whole set-up – bubbly yet also deep blonde heroine works on a television show while torn between two suitors – struck the one of us who’s read Bridget Jones’ Diary as somewhat familiar. But familiar is what people want from these kinds of stories: it’s the little things that make genre novels work, the details around the edges of a safely predictable scenario.
So good news! If you live in Melbourne’s inner west you’re going to love the way this authentically re-creates the train trip from Yarraville Station to North Melbourne (presumably the TV station our heroine works at is based in Docklands, though in that case Southern Cross Station is closer), even if it does look like they maybe fudged the stop at Footscray (too hard to film there without getting stabbed). It’s this kind of accurate detail that can turn an average show into a winner. Did you know that The Wog Boy was also filmed in Yarraville? Now that’s a comedy pedigree to be proud of.
The first taste of actual comedy – aside from hilarious pratfalls, of course – comes around six minutes in, where our heroine Lily Woodward (Jessica Marais) a): delivers a rant about the evils of “manspreading” on public transport, then b): takes a bunch of photos of the offending manspreader and gets sprung by a couple of ticket inspectors. She then gets a ticket. The show moves on. Is manspreading really that funny that it deserves to be the first comedy bit in the first episode of a show that’s largely being sold as containing comedy?
Also, we totally get that a big part of the appeal of chick lit is that the heroine has a super-cool fantasy job which somehow also contains loads of totally relatable angst, but having the lead in a sad sack funk at the very start of your show because she’s going to have to produce a cooking segment for breakfast television sounds like, as they say, “one of those good problems”. Sure, she’s got to be bummed out now so that when the chef turns out to be a stud we get a hilarious comedy reversal, but still: “woe is me, my job making television is slightly onerous because they wouldn’t greenlight my segment about female labour around the world” feels like a sentence with at least one too many points where your lead sounds like a stupid whinger. A performance that’s around 30% pouting doesn’t help.
But you know, that’s just bad writing and things can always get better. “We’re best friends, we can tell each other anything” is not a great line; putting it just after the best friends have shagged just makes Lily seem like a hefty bag stuffed with whatever dumb actions the writers see necessary to jerk the plot along. It’s not even that “the besties just shagged and now things are totes awkward” is a bad idea, though really it kind of is when you put it right at the start of your first episode so we’ve barely had a chance to see them together as friends before the status quo goes out the window; having our heroine then fly off the handle and demand he goes home is… actually, it’s kind of consistent characterisation, considering how we just mentioned her career woes are only woes if she’s an idiot.
Before we continue, here’s a question: what kind of television show goes to the trouble to accurately portray Melbourne’s public transport system but then figures “sure, breakfast television producers get up at 7.10am every morning”? Seriously, we don’t know if this is genius – of course you want to get the details your viewers actually know about correct – or just a sign that the producers don’t actually know what people find interesting. “Train timetables or how television gets made… they’re both as exciting as each other, right?”
[hey, do they still sell “music from the hit TV series” CDs? Because this crams so many “hit tracks” into the first fifteen minutes we figured they either got the music in bulk or had a sweet CD deal lined up]
Still, this is not a show that’s completely without redeeming features. The cast! They’re pretty good, especially the broader comedy characters (her parents, the TV show’s hosts). The central trio are generally solid too, even without any strong chemistry in week one; it’s totally possible to see them growing into characters that are both likable and funny, which is more than you can say for a lot of dramedy casts. There’s the occasional smart moment in the script too – the bit about using lemons to get into a nightclub was surprising and plausible in a way that most Australian television is not – which gives us hope that things might get better.
Because as this stands this just has a few too many rough edges to be considered a success. The viewers didn’t exactly flock either: it only pulled in 684,000 people nationwide, which wasn’t great even with pretty much all of SA plunged into darkness. It’s the kind of show that seems perfectly serviceable just so long as you don’t look too closely (as we’ve been doing). The problem with making that kind of television in 2016 is that the only people left watching television are the ones who are actually paying attention – everyone else is off checking social media.
And if there’s one thing people aren’t talking up on social media, it’s The Wrong Girl.
The Heat is On
It’s been a long time coming, but that Working Dog animated series announced back in 2014 is finally within sight – especially if you’re the kind of person who’s okay with illegal downloads (and we don’t mean the Get This CD):
Netflix is amping up its animated slate with a new comedy, “Pacific Heat,” hailing from award-winning Australian company Working Dog Productions, Variety has learned exclusively.
The series, which landed a 13-episode order for its initial season, will debut on Netflix Dec. 2 in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Ireland. In Australia, the television partner is Foxtel and the series will premiere in late 2016.
“Pacific Heat” follows the exploits of a dynamic unit of undercover police investigators working on the glitzy Gold Coast of Australia. The glamorous, sophisticated and sun-drenched paradise masks a hot-bed of crime — everyone from drug smugglers and biker gangs to eco-terrorists and the person who invented frozen yogurt — and in order to tackle this seedy underbelly, police established a covert squad of highly-trained operatives, known as Pacific Heat. When criminals strike, the squad will be there in an unconventional and uncompromising manner, and not afraid to operate outside the law — provided at least one of them is wearing a fluorescent safety vest.
The good news is, this sounds a lot like an animated version of their numerous very funny 80s-and-90s era radio “dramas” like Johnny Swank and the adapted-for-TV Funky Squad.
Sitch says that “Pacific Heat,” at its heart, is a satire on cop shows. He jokes the idea came about because “two decades ago, we laughed that we didn’t think they could think of another cop show…We sat down one day and we almost got down to 100 with the number of shows we’ve drawn from.”
In terms of tone, Sitch says, “You could throw in ‘The A-Team,’ ‘Hawaii Five-0’ and ‘Charlie’s Angels.’” And in terms of viewership, though the series is animated, like “South Park” and “Family Guy,” the show is made for adults. But Sitch believes it will have a mass appeal.
“We, in a way, made this for adults, but we know that if you make something for adults, a 12-year-old boy will get it,” he says with a laugh. “If you make it for adults, one of the groups that will enjoy it is teenagers.”
The bad news is, Archer has been mining this kind of turf for what, eight years now? And while no doubt it’ll be a different show – if you can dig up copies of Working Dog’s old radio serials it’s well worth your time and they make it pretty clear that their silly rapid-fire approach is more about straight-up jokes than Archer‘s character comedy – the fact that to the casual viewer it looks similar is going to be a problem. Then again, who even thought Archer would still be going now? Two years ago it looked like it was on its last legs and yet here we are, worried it’s going to cut the lunch of a silly Working Dog cop parody.
It’ll also be interesting to see just how big a gap there is between December 2nd and “late 2016”. You’d have to think Foxtel wouldn’t want to sit on their hands for long – it’s not like Australians don’t know their way around a torrent site and at least some of the audience for this is going to be hard core comedy nerds *cough* who aren’t going to wait around to check out a new Working Dog product. It’s not like those guys are going to still have Foxtel a year after Open Slather died.
But you know, maybe taking out a subscription might be worth it this time. Rob Sitch doing his “pompous guy” voice? That’s got to be worth $50 a month.
Movement at the Station
Here’s all we know: No Activity is returning to Stan with new episodes on October 26th. As the press release says:
Rose Byrne and Damon Herriman join Patrick Brammall, Darren Gilshenan, Genevieve Morris, Harriet Dyer, Dan Wyllie and David Field for more action, more romance, more… well, just more sitting around.
We weren’t exactly massive fans of the first series, but that was mostly because it largely passed us by – hey, it was on Stan, a television channel you have to pay money up front to watch, which puts it near the bottom of our viewing options – rather than because we didn’t like what we saw.
This time around we’ve vowed to change our ways and give it the attention it deserves. Which for this blog means at least a handful of rambling posts talking about “laughs” like they were some kind of quantifiable unit of measurement.
Oh, it also seems that Hard Quiz starts October 19th at 8pm on ABC1. A comedy quiz show! It’s like it’s 2011 all over again.
Jesus Built My Hotrod
Movies, like many things in life, have seasons. Sometimes it’s the season for expensive yet stupid blockbusters; at other times of year cinemas are full of prestige arty projects. But this particular time of year is the school holidays, and that’s really all you need to know about the latest all-Aussie film to hit the big screen, Spin Out. It may be full of characters above the age of consent drunkenly partying in some lawless free-fire zone where the only morality involves doing circle work in your ute, but at it’s heart it’s a kids movie.
Or just one that treats its audience like kids, it’s hard to tell the difference really.
The story is so simple we really should just stick a picture of the poster here because it doesn’t get more complex than that: there’s a bush ute muster which a lot of Aussie types are attending and shock twist, pretty much everyone in a relationship suddenly finds their relationship on the rocks. Time for everyone to win their partners back! Plus there’s some mildly suss big city types hanging around looking for a root and a woman is worried her boyfriend isn’t going to take well the news that her baby isn’t his baby, though considering he seems to be a professional beer drinker you’d think he’d be happy at the chance of avoiding fetal alcohol syndrome. Party!
It’s a decent enough set-up for laughs but in a brave move this doesn’t actually deliver any. It’s like the creative team – that’d be writer Tim Ferguson (The Doug Anthony All Stars), who co directs with Mark Gracie (You and Your Stupid Mate) were so keen to make a kid-friendly slice of all-Aussie adventure that they made a film full of events that technically look like comedy but lack the spark that turns a seemingly funny idea – hey, lets have a character go into a portaloo then have someone else throw a firecracker in so when he comes out he’s covered in shit – into something that actually is funny.
For example, the film opens with our two extremely attractive leads doing their synchronised ute stunt, only the guy takes it too far (using a brick and an occer strap to get his ute circling without human intervention) and it all goes HORRIBLY WRONG. By which we mean the ute starts making wider circles, the guy can’t get back inside, the brick falls off the accelerator and the ute gradually comes to a halt right before it would have crashed into her. On the one hand, it’s clearly a situation where we’re meant to think “phew, lucky that didn’t get out of hand”; on the other, having it get out of hand would have been funny and exciting.
The cast generally do a decent job so we can’t blame them, and the basic structure of the film is strong so the script works on that level at least. Part of the problem is that the film is simply too mild to get big laughs from the idea of a bunch of people getting massively drunk at a no-holds-barred party. This isn’t a film where the party gets crazier and crazier until the sheer over-the-top nature of events is the pay-off, and the one big moment towards the climax that seems like it was maybe meant to work that way – someone hooks a bunch of kegs up to a windmill to create a beer windmill, which is a windmill that sprays beer – is shit. Mark Gracie proved he’s not the guy for big visual gags with the notoriously rubbish ending of Takeaway, and things have not improved here.
Surprisingly though, this also is not a film where the characters are made fun of for cheap laughs. In fact, it bends over backwards to make sure that just about everyone is treated as a human being. The film’s occasional vomit jokes and the (only?) casual sex reference are limited to nameless supporting characters; even though this is a film featuring someone whose life seems to revolve around drinking record amounts of canned beer, a goth bouncer named Scary Mary and a trio of dropkicks who thought their girlfriends would be impressed by them joining the army, at worst they’re seen as well-meaning but silly. Even the evil city folk at the B&S Ball looking to steal our main characters away from each other aren’t really bad people. What the hell?
It doesn’t even hold up as a chance to check out a unique piece of Australian culture, as pretty much all the unique bits have been sanded off to make this as bland as possible. Of course, that’s in large part because the “uniquely Australian” elements of a ute muster / B&S Ball are the terrifying levels of alcohol consumption, the shockingly predatory behaviour from the blokes, the appallingly racist and sexist bumper stickers the ute owners display with pride, and numerous other elements that fall under “what happens in the bush stays in the bush”. That’s not a negative, mind you – this isn’t that kind of film and that’s a good thing. But if you’re going to take that stuff out, you need to put something else in.
And yet, this is a rare Australian comedy that gets pretty much everything right – or at least, doesn’t get too much wrong – apart from the comedy. You could argue with the choices the creative team have made, but they’re pretty much all legitimate choices that could have led to a decent film. All the characters have the depth and texture of a sheet of fairly expensive toilet paper; the film makes up for it by having close to a dozen featured cast members in a 90 minute film, so there’s no time to dig deep into their motivations and personal quirks. The stakes are low and the plot is predictable; again, by having so many stories taking place (and by constantly jumping between them) it at least feels like there’s a lot going on. Plus it’s a romantic comedy: predictability is what people want.
Thing is, they also want laughs. Perhaps Ferguson and Gracie set too many limits on themselves: it’s a comedy about a bunch of people at a big party, only the film doesn’t want to make fun of the people or the party. It often feels like a story told by a mate who keeps telling you what you’re hearing was hilarious at the time and then just trails off with “… I guess you had to be there”. And when the cinema next door is showing Blair Witch – or Sully, or Secret Life of Pets or Bridget Jones III – there’s just not that much of a reason to be there.
(also, why was this called Spin Out instead of Burn Out? Our days of hanging out with frankly terrifying “ute boys” are well behind us and thank fuck for that because presumably things have changed over the years but back when we knew people who went to B&S balls B&S balls sounded like drunken orgies where getting driven over in your sleeping bag was a 20% chance no matter where you put it. But back then people who drove utes did things like “burn outs” or “circle work” or occasionally “doughnuts” – no-one ever did a “spin out”.)