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On a generally miserable Melbourne day, a mate and I decided to head down to Melbourne Central Hoyts in order to while away a bit more than an hour and a half (103 minutes, to be exact) retasting the heady wine of Year 8 English.
I am of course referring to the adaptation of John Marsden’s much-celebrated and identically-titled novel in which seven –and eventually eight – teenagers become bats out of Hell as they grapple with the invasion of their pristine Wirrawee by a foreign nation. Avid readers will remember that Marsden never names this invader – only geographical realities dictate that the nation of this invader is Asian in identity. Here, first-time director Stuart Beattie endorses this ambiguity (some would say irrelevancy) by giving us no visual clues other than obvious facial appearances which the audience can then deduce. On a geopolitical level, then, this cloaking and masking of specific nationalities and – more importantly – this refusal to play the blame game in any way, shape or form will hold Australia in good stead as it seeks to develop and maintain regional diplomatic partnerships.
But enough with the Realpolitik. On with the movie....
It starts in picture-perfect postcard-nominee Wirrawee gearing up for their annual “Show”. Here, the whiz-bang Ferris wheel takes pride of place among a Showgrounds that would put our setup to shame.
(Nah, I’m just kidding. Thanks to the cinematography, you can almost smell the freshly-cut grass and the homemade pies of the Wirrawee Show which, of course, is no bad thing. But, alas, I’m on another tangent).
The movie starts with Corrie (Rachel Hurd-Wood) telling Ellie (Caitlin Stasey, and yes, you know you remember her from Neighbours) about how she “did the dirty deed” (Years 7-9 need not bother asking) with boyf Kevin (Lincoln Lewis, for all you Home and Away fans). Corrie goes on to make Ellie give a “pinky promise” to not gossip about her adventures. This “pinky promise” belies the depths to which Ellie and Corrie must descend to later in the film, and it sets us up for this contrast. Beattie competently completes the task of exploiting this contrast.
And in fact, Beattie only brings “competence” to this film. But then again, the material that Marsden originally gave teens way back in the early nineties is stock-standard coming-of-age fare. It was only his brilliant prose that stopped the novel from becoming a bit of a farce.
But Beattie doesn’t have brilliant prose to work with: he has instead a half-decent cast full of teen pop idols (however, Deniz Akdeniz, Phoebe Tonkin and Chris Pang as Homer, Fiona and a sullen Lee respectively are delightfully unknown) and a twelve-year old (that’s how old Robyn, played by Ashleigh Cummings, looks in the film), a bizarre and random cameo by Colin Friels as dentist Dr Clemens (with the amount of drugs he has on his person, one wonders if he bears any relation to Roger) who acts as a rather surly deus ex machina – in one inspired exchange, while cleaning out one of the characters’ bullet wounds, he caustically remarks to the cohort, “Youse picked a helluva weekend to go camping”. Gold.
What irritated me was the token reference to stoner Chris (Andrew Ryan). His character was seemingly making up the numbers in this film. In a big-budget, commercial flick like this (InsideFilm.com.au estimates 27 million dollars), Chris looks out of place standing in the same frame as photogenic Fiona. His character, unfortunately, would be better suited to an Ingmar Bergman film discussing, I don’t know, the evils of US imperialism. (Obviously my knowledge of Bergman films is a little hazy). In other words, his character should have been scrapped in pre-production. But then again, he does provide a little bit of comic relief in a fairly-emotionally charged movie – his pot-influenced recount of the first days of the crisis is worth a chuckle.
Ultimately, it’s worth seeing this movie if only because of its nostalgic factor. Everything about this film may only be “competent” but when you see it with a couple of mates and a popcorn and Coke in hand, it certainly is not the worst way to see out a miserable Melbourne day.
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Check out the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_KhErNyiq8
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