gedwards2 I've read up lots of background to this film .. John Birmingham, the novel, the stage play .. I guess the stage play must have been good, it ran for a long time in Aus. You can't really have a stage play with slow, dreary action and dialogue, but you sure can in a film.I've lived in share houses & flats in Aus and London and they were fun, with lots of great people and parties around at other people's flats, weekly tennis bookings, nights out at the pub (like The Lord Dudley in Sydney) etc. I can't recognise the dreary, hopeless, filthy dirty world portrayed here, but then I didn;t live in houses full of druggies either.This film drags from start to finish. Nothing believable happens. The lines are sloooow, with lingering shots of pained faces. There are a few comic moments, but they're deliberatley cut off to go back to the painful dragging. It's like a documentary of a series of squats lived in by unemployed drop-outs, shot in slow motion.Film have to be sharp and fast, with quick witty dialogue for me. Enough said.

e-1529 I regret watching this movie. The only positive thing about this movie is the soundtrack and how the characters show their weirdness without hiding it. For the rest , there is no plot, no emotions, no nothing , no sense whatsoever. If you would like to make movies in your life but you're not sure , watch "he died with a felafel in his hand" , you can't do worse than that. Wait , maybe Van Helsing was worse , but that' s another story. After watching it me and other for friends were speechless. Our faces were saying: what was that all about?

KH_11_NZ This film is a perfect example of the old saying not to judge a book by its cover. Here in NZ the DVD cover is a shot of him underwater with cigarette smoke hazing it over a little which looks uncannily like his head is in a toilet bowl. Out of pure curiosity I finally ventured up enough courage to take the 'plunge' and rented it out. What I found pleasantly surprised me. The dialogue is actually quite witty and sharp at times. What really makes this film tick however is the characters. They are from all walks of life covering a multitude of nationalities, much like a real flatting / boarding situation is. Noah Taylor plays his part as a washed out and uninspired writer named Danny down to pat even though I think he must have the least amount of dialogue in the film. Emily Hamilton plays Sam, a young and somewhat naive girl who, like most young people, hasn't totally decided what to do with her life. I found her performance to be quite convincing and not contrived or overacted like some performances can be in these types of low budget art films.Romane Bohringer plays a spooky role as a pagan who takes her religion very seriously at times (The scene where she convinces one of her brainless flatmates to be a 'sacrificial lamb' upon a burning stake is hilarious) Her performances are also above average and generally tend to give the viewer the impression she is a witch bent on injecting chaos into any given domestic situation. Alex Minglet is perfectly casted as Taylor, a serious drinker who enjoys dressing up in commando gear and playing golf with frogs. His antics had me in stitches whenever he appeared on screen. There are other brilliant little support performances by Haskel Daniel as 'Jabber the Hut' who controls (and worships) the television set and Francis McMahon who plays Dirk who is having troubles coming out of the 'closet'. Also look out for some weird European dude who only says two lines during the film, "They are very, very fit." - Oddball stuff but makes for good humour, especially if you are a person who has been flatting at one time or another. This film isn't just about laughs however. Ideas and themes of friendship and new beginnings are put across quite seamlessly into the plot as Danny experiences a rite of passage which takes him from being stuck in the past to looking forward to the future and leaving the mess (which follows him from flat to flat during the film) well behind. Brett Stewart plays a heroin junkie named Flip who is trying to get ahead in life but finds himself caught in a ever increasing downward spiral of drug intake. I feel this film touches upon the issue of hard drug addiction quite well as you can visibly see what it is slowly doing to Flip. The film is set in Australia and is in my personal opinion one of the best films to emerge from there in a while. The soundtrack is complimentary and the ending will leave you with a smile on your face. I recommend this film to anyone who has a taste for small budget arty type films and can enjoy a little bit of black humour with their vegemite on toast in the morning. 7/10

hopoate Take a book that everyone loves, rip the guts out of it and stick in a load of pretentious dross that is suffocating the Australian film industry, leaving in only the most superficial aspects of the book itself.It could have been so much more, the film looks great and the cast, as with most Australian films, is fantastic. It's typical that the script lets down the whole operation with each department that made up the screenwriter's Arts degree getting a nod so big it almost knocks over the set. Any subtle elements of the book are discarded, making it easy to tell which scenes are from the book (crazy, zany, whacky) and which scenes are added (grave, weighty, dripping with irony). It's condescending, self-indulgent, lazy and a complete wa*k.John Birmingham is one of the few Australian writers who can bridge the gap between rollicking larrikin and insightful observer. It's obviously alot harder than it seems.