Local delights in Galore

John Moulis said :

The film critic in the Sunday Telegraph slammed it.

What a fantastic review. My favourite bit:

As we all should know by now: if you have seen one-and-a-half Australian coming-of-age dramas, you have pretty much seen them all.

Therefore, it’s hard to come up with any reason why you should endure the shambolic snoozer that is Galore.

The film critic in the Sunday Telegraph slammed it.

The Official Trailer made me never want to see this movie. Thank you for warning me off. It looked dreary and pointless. And where was the bushfire? I saw a bit of a burn off, but no bushfire, no dark red sky, no cinders falling from the sky, no wild wind, as I experienced during the bushfire…and my suburb was kilometres from the fire front.

I didn’t like this film. I dragged my poor unsuspecting partner along yesterday, keen to see a movie set in Canberra and starring Ashleigh Cummings (who we know from Miss Fisher%u2019s Murder Mysteries). The plot was dreary and the characters unlikeable. Maybe it%u2019s just the old fart factor %u2013 we%u2019re a generation older than the main characters %u2013 but it portrayed Canberra as boring and small-minded, and teenagers as thoughtless, drunken thugs. Weirdly, almost everyone in the theatre looked much older than us, so we wondered what motivated them to see the film %u2026 and what they thought of all the swearing and punch-ups. Like Davo says, Australian films are bloody awful! I go to a lot of movies, from a lot of countries, and most have something positive going for them. This one was just depressing.

davo101 said :

Warning, if you are one of those people that doesn’t like reading bad reviews on the internet then stop reading now.

I was invited to go and see Galore having no idea what it was about. I was informed that it was a “film set in Canberra before the 2003 bushfires”. I replied that, sure, I’d love to go and see yet another “worthy” Australian film.

I should explain that “worthy” is a code word in our household for works that have been produced by an artist that are intended to be appreciated by other artists. Works of literature are an example where authors write books that are intended to be read by other authors and admired for their craftsmanship. Australian films are a great source of worthy output. Our films get such large tax breaks that they tend to be made by film makers who want to make films that impress other film makers and win awards at film festivals; as there is no commercial incentive they are not made to entertain audiences and there may even be an aspect of deliberately not “pandering” to the audience’s wants so as to not compromise the “art”. It’s less pleasure and more of that bitter tasting cough medicine your mother gave you because she thought it would do you good, but is much more likely to just be unpleasant.

The still in the Youtube video above summarises what you are going to see in this film: a lot of extreme close ups of teenagers sucking face. The rest of the story is a group of characters who have had bad things happen to them continue to have bad things happen to them during the story. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic and as they make a number of bad decisions you don’t really feel sorry for them when the inevitable resulting bad thing happens to them. It’s really only Isaac (great to see the Kiwi contingent of Canberra affecting their beached-az accents) you feel sorry for getting caught up in all of it.

The bushfire plot line seems to have been added in simply as a reason to base the story in Canberra, if you took it out then the story could have taken place in any Australian city. The bushfire is really just another bad thing that happens to all of the characters at the end of the film. The bushfire in the film makes it look like the characters are fleeing a slightly over-sized hazard reduction burn–perhaps the CGI budget didn’t extend to making it look more like this.

I did enjoy the location spotting in the film and laughing at how the geography of Canberra has been distorted. It’s also comforting to know that the teenagers of Canberra behave exactly as portrayed on A Current Affair. When Billie asks her mother if she can have a glass of wine because it’s her birthday and then proceeds to pour herself a pint of white got a laugh from the audience.

Having taken my medicine I left the cinema wondering what I was supposed to have taken from the film. I certainly wasn’t entertained and neither did I learn anything but it was certainly worthy.

Good review there Davo.

Warning, if you are one of those people that doesn’t like reading bad reviews on the internet then stop reading now.

I was invited to go and see Galore having no idea what it was about. I was informed that it was a “film set in Canberra before the 2003 bushfires”. I replied that, sure, I’d love to go and see yet another “worthy” Australian film.

I should explain that “worthy” is a code word in our household for works that have been produced by an artist that are intended to be appreciated by other artists. Works of literature are an example where authors write books that are intended to be read by other authors and admired for their craftsmanship. Australian films are a great source of worthy output. Our films get such large tax breaks that they tend to be made by film makers who want to make films that impress other film makers and win awards at film festivals; as there is no commercial incentive they are not made to entertain audiences and there may even be an aspect of deliberately not “pandering” to the audience’s wants so as to not compromise the “art”. It’s less pleasure and more of that bitter tasting cough medicine your mother gave you because she thought it would do you good, but is much more likely to just be unpleasant.

The still in the Youtube video above summarises what you are going to see in this film: a lot of extreme close ups of teenagers sucking face. The rest of the story is a group of characters who have had bad things happen to them continue to have bad things happen to them during the story. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic and as they make a number of bad decisions you don’t really feel sorry for them when the inevitable resulting bad thing happens to them. It’s really only Isaac (great to see the Kiwi contingent of Canberra affecting their beached-az accents) you feel sorry for getting caught up in all of it.

The bushfire plot line seems to have been added in simply as a reason to base the story in Canberra, if you took it out then the story could have taken place in any Australian city. The bushfire is really just another bad thing that happens to all of the characters at the end of the film. The bushfire in the film makes it look like the characters are fleeing a slightly over-sized hazard reduction burn–perhaps the CGI budget didn’t extend to making it look more like this.

I did enjoy the location spotting in the film and laughing at how the geography of Canberra has been distorted. It’s also comforting to know that the teenagers of Canberra behave exactly as portrayed on A Current Affair. When Billie asks her mother if she can have a glass of wine because it’s her birthday and then proceeds to pour herself a pint of white got a laugh from the audience.

Having taken my medicine I left the cinema wondering what I was supposed to have taken from the film. I certainly wasn’t entertained and neither did I learn anything but it was certainly worthy.