This week Manny Lewis hits Australian cinemas, and to paraphrase a former Prime Minister, it will have as much impact as being struck by a wet lettuce leaf. It’s also just about as funny.
The feature from Carl Barron, who can statistically claim to be Australia’s most popular comedian thanks to a hugely successful stand-up DVD that broke records in 2003, tracks the journey of one hugely successful stand-up comic from relatively-unlikeable self-indulgent single depressive, to marginally more likeable self-indulgent depressive in a relationship.
It is apt that we get Top Five in the same week, Chris Rock’s film about a stand-up comedian seeking a serious life and facing romantic challenges. It couldn’t be more different in plot, style, quality and enjoyability.
In short, one of them is an early candidate for the best films of the year list, one is an early favourite for the worst films of the year list.
There will be some who argue that Carl Barron should be praised for even getting a film made, for telling an Australian story, for overcoming the numerous impediments to deliver an Aussie comedy.
Cobblers. Bull dust. Bollocks.
Firstly this is an Australian film only so much as it was filmed here and delivers its painfully bad finale in Sydney Harbour. The story is not only not Australian, it is a sad and painful regurgitation of the Hollywood formula that we have seen time and time again. Even success within the film is defined as getting to tour the USA.
Secondly, getting this film made is an achievement only if we define it as meaning delivering approximately two hours of scenes that have actors in them, speaking words and not bumping into furniture. By any benchmark of quality – originality, craft, philosophy, commentary – Barron has not succeeded in making a film.
Finally, there are too many impediments to making and distributing a film in Australia, but all this film proves is that they are the wrong impediments. Somehow Barron’s fame meant the Seven network got behind the production, first funding it and then promoting it through supposed news and current affairs programming.
In a world of far too many bigger problems, let’s not overhype the concern of one more terrible Australian comedy.
But let’s also not champion this as anything but a demonstration of too many problems to mention.
