Definitely not Wilder's best, but the fact that a sex comedy from the 50s has aged this not-badly is something of a miracle.
Plenty of good bits, but the story falters near the end when it starts to treat our main character with some amount of sympathy, rather than treating him as the subject of mockery (as he deserves).
So devoid of charm, wit, or a plot that it feels less like a film and more like documentary footage detailing the slurs Australians used before the word "wog" was invented.
To Powell's and Pressburger's credit, this is still better than the last third of A Matter of Life and Death.
All of human wisdom can be summarised in these two words: wait and hope.
I have waited nearly a year for this film to come to Australia, and it turns out to be better than I could have ever hoped for.
Firstly, this screenplay is practically flawless. Adapting the full plot of the book is completely impossible for any feature-length adaptation, but this film gets the perfect balance of streamlining the story while still giving it room to breathe. And…
A muddled and messy but ultimately quite enjoyable Melbourne film with a lot of good laughs. I'm definitely going to hell for laughing as hard as I did at Dave making room for the body in the graveyard.
Funny to think that just three years before Jurassic Park, Sam Neill was doing films like this, in which he played the most pathetic loser ever to grace north Melbourne.
