Just to be clear, I don’t inherently hate Australian cinema.
As much as my previous rantings concerning the film scene over here may argue,
I don’t see a massive issue with our collective output. There’s not nearly
enough of it, don’t get me wrong, but what we do come out with can and often is very good. We have a penchant for
cultural self-examination and down-to-earth humour that filmmakers would sell
their livers to get such a consistent hold of, and a pedigree of actors that
stands shoulder-to-shoulder with anywhere else on Earth.
I’ve always maintained that, if anything, the issue starts when the critics and marketing departments get their noses into everything, combining cultural mandates with laughable tone-deafness to create a landscape more than capable of great content but also blind to what should be done with it. At least, that’s how it usually goes. Then come along films like this that throw the occasional rusty spanner into the works by actually getting all of us to agree on something. Namely, that said product is outright garbage.
I’ve always maintained that, if anything, the issue starts when the critics and marketing departments get their noses into everything, combining cultural mandates with laughable tone-deafness to create a landscape more than capable of great content but also blind to what should be done with it. At least, that’s how it usually goes. Then come along films like this that throw the occasional rusty spanner into the works by actually getting all of us to agree on something. Namely, that said product is outright garbage.
