Review: Swinging Safari

“An assault on the senses, as every possible Australian 1970s reference is hurled at you in 96 minutes of pure chaos and madness. But is it any good?”

In my experience, the majority of Australian films often fall into one of two types. Depressing suburban dramas or outback set films like AUSTRALIA, a film so fair dinkum Aussie that it had to spell its title in all caps.

Writer/ director Stephen Elliott, whose main claim to fame is The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, brings an extremely wacky comedy to the screen set in the 1970s. But like AUSTRALIA, this film hits you over the head with so many Australian-isms, and also so many references to the 1970s, that your brain is left too battered and bruised to take in any semblance of plot or meaning from the film. Oh, and of course, just when you thought the film couldn’t get any more Aussie, Jack Thompson shows up. Crickey.

The final 20 minutes of this film was probably the best 20 minutes, as by this point, the film finally settled onto some sort of structured narrative that allowed the viewer to care for at least two of the characters. But prior to that, we were treated to an endless messy collage of crazy events and over the top behaviour from kids and adults alike, superglued together by strange snippets of homemade Super 8 films with violent special effects, all of which was wrapped up in showing off tasteless artefacts from the time. Oh, and we also have a beached whale and a depressing story about a turtle that just left me feeling sad and disliking the characters even more. We also get the expected references to things such as “this is a Betamax, it’s the future. Forget that VHS crap, I did my research”. Ha ha….At time when some proper dialogue would help with the story, this sort of thing only gets in the way and feels forced.

The behaviour of the adults is not well explained. There is a brief line that seems to me to suggest that they’re saying that they grew up under hard-line conservative parents in the 1950s, and therefore grew up ‘scared’. And their parenting style, or lack thereof, is a result of that upbringing? I think? I’m not really sure. It was just a series of very self-centred, nasty people and their ratbag kids. When they do decide to start to parenting, that doesn’t go too well either, as they try to push 14 year old's into the bedroom together. There really is very little to like about these characters.

The film plays up the lack of concern for danger with kids at the time, with penny-bungers going off everywhere, kids left to run around outside unsupervised, making crazy swings, slides, getting up to all manner of no good, playing with whoever, as well as the locking of a child in a hot car. There is a comedy film to be made with these ideas, especially in this age of cotton wool we now bring children up in. But the subplots of parents swinging, drinking, selling encyclopedias, gadgets, revenge plots and beached whales all distract from that idea. A simpler film could have found a lot more comedic material and could have made for a better film.

There are moments that made me laugh out loud. The actors give it their all and it is somewhat unique as a film, so I will give it that. But coming out of a cinema asking ‘what the hell did I just watch?’ can be either a good thing or a bad thing, and I feel on this occasion it was very much a bad thing.

The cast is good. The kids probably come off the best, as they feel mostly like real characters. Guy Pearce is full of energy as the slightly pathetic parent. Kylie Minogue doesn’t speak for the first half of the film, but is quite good in her un-glamorous role. Jeremy Sims has gained some weight in recent times, but is probably the most enjoyable of the adults. Asher Keddie almost feels like her character walked off the set of Offspring but left her sense of responsibility behind her. When her character grabbed one of the kids and peed on her, she probably knew this film wasn’t going to boost her career.

Some people will probably love the wackiness of this film. For me, it left me numb to most of its humour and gave me a slight headache from all the chaos. There are other Australian films coming out this year, let’s hope the standard improves.