Bad
posters are a dime a dozen, but bad comedy posters are legion. They’re not hard
to spot, typically featuring actors engaged in decontextualised mugging against
bland, often plain white backgrounds, desperate to please and spread joy. And
the red text … so much red text …
But a poorly-postered comedy can rise above the station of its ropey advertising. Though spared the red text and white backdrops, here are two Australian comedies with unflattering posters that rise above their middling promotions.
Now
Add Honey (2015)
Director:
Wayne Hope
Starring: Robyn Butler, Portia De Rossi, Lucy Fry, Lucy Durack, Hamish Blake
Now Add Honey is a film I knew next to nought about, besides it featuring a handful of familiar faces (Angus Sampson, Portia De Rossi, Hamish Blake, David Field) and being an Australian comedy with a bad poster promising young vs old, spunk vs frump, and other forms of comedic culture clash. Caroline (Robyn Butler, also responsible for the script) is a frustrated matriarch whose husband (Richard Morgan) is distant, oldest daughter (Philippe Coulthard) is going through teenage doldrums, youngest daughter (Lucinda Armstrong) is obsessed with children’s entertainer Monkey Girl, and younger sister (Lucy Durack) and her fiancée (Blake) are wedding-obsessed. So far, so middle class. Enter niece Honey (Lucy Fry), abovementioned children’s entertainer Monkey Girl, and her unravelling stage mother Beth (De Rossi), returning from America to rekindle family discontent. When Beth is arrested over a booty of prescription drugs in her luggage, Caroline is tasked with managing her niece, whose pampered upbringing and impending transition from children’s megastar to saucy pop stardom lead to all manner of hijinks.
Comparison
to two other poorly-postered Australian comedies that take jabs at the
entertainment industry, The Wannabes and The Flip Side,
is instructive in elucidating Now Add Honey’s merits: nobody embarrasses
themselves here on the same monumental scale as The Wannabes, and the
entertainment industry milieu of the film feels much more realised than the
barely sketched world and toothless parody of The Flip Side. I may well
have ongoing Australian comedy Stockholm syndrome after a jam-packed month of
comedies in the early days of Down Under Flix—an anthropological undertaking
that encompassed rom coms, small town comedies, musical comedies, the abovementioned Wannabes, and distinguished others—but I enjoyed Now Add Honey despite finding it only sporadically
amusing. Like Tommy Lee Jones, I find it hard to sanction the buffoonery,
but the ensemble—especially Butler, Fry, and De Rossi—throw themselves into
said buffoonery with such enthusiasm that their commitment goes some way to
winning me over, and writer Butler and director Wayne Hope (star of BoyTown) - both comedy stalwarts - juggle the film’s various threads and
subplots well, weaving them together effectively at film’s end.
Any
Questions for Ben? (2012)
Director:
Rob Sitch
Starring: Josh Lawson, Rachael Taylor, Daniel Henshall, Felicity Ward, Christian Clark, Lachy Hulme, Rob Sitch
In contrast to Now Add Honey, a film I had little context for on first viewing, I had plenty of context for Any Questions for Ben?, and not just the shared nomenclature. I like Josh Lawson’s work in Becoming Bond, where he plays former 007 George Lazenby with empathy and wit. I’m a fan of Rachel Taylor’s work in Red Dog and Ladies in Black, and her supporting stint on Marvel’s Jessica Jones. And I admire director Rob Sitch and the Working Dog team’s debut and sophomore films, The Castle and The Dish, two fairly unimpeachable Australian comedy classics. Like Yahoo Serious, their feature film career is three and done, with the third film following a number of years after their initial hits and perceived as a disappointment. But just as Serious’s swansong Mr Accident is more inventive and fun than its reputation (or, more pointedly, lack thereof) suggests, Any Questions for Ben? is better than its derided reputation (or lack thereof) implies. The poster, fittingly enough, is what turned me off seeing the film at the time of its release, conveying the personality and charm of a pricey, finely burnished stock photo, with a title that proved head-scratching outside the context of the film.
While there’s merit and logic to measuring a film by the yardstick of its director’s earlier work, doing so sometimes reveals more about the audience and their entitlement than it does the work itself. While I don’t want to make this review another reclamation project for a film ill-treated by critics (as per my recent review of Where the Green Ants Dream), I’ll say that those who measured Any Questions for Ben? unfairly in light of The Castle and The Dish—lamenting the absence of an endearing elder statesman in the lead and a community of likeable misfits around him with their own recognisable patter and quirks—neglected the film’s interesting character portrait of twentysomething professional & personal crossroads, and the transposition of said community of endearing misfits with recognisable quirks and patter into a new context. It’s true that there’s a shift from universality to specificity from The Castle to Any Questions for Ben?—the former a celebration of family and home in the broadest sense, the latter laser-focused on an affluent early-careerist questioning his choices despite his preposterous success—and by definition the latter won’t be as accessible to all. But if as moviegoers we can roll with the events of, say, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, some leeway can be afforded to an affectionate portrait of executive class ennui, even coming from the nation’s foremost affectionate chroniclers of Aussie battler fun-times.
The titular Ben (Lawson) is a marketing executive whose speciality is engineering hugely successful brand campaigns and then getting out of dodge. He’s had multiple jobs in a short span of years, as well as living in multiple rentals and being in multiple short-term relationships. Life is fast-paced, exciting, but hollow. When he attends a career’s evening at his former high school and receives zero questions from the audience (the source of the title) he begins to question his transient life choices, and the appearance of an old crush, Alex (Taylor), fans the flame of a quarter life crisis.
While it lacks the sheer quotability of Working Dog’s earlier films—in fairness, few Australian films are as quotable as The Castle—their filmmaking has grown from feature to feature. There’s a surface technical flair and flash to Any Questions for Ben? that’s a world beyond the rudimentary craft of their cozy debut feature—perhaps fitting for a film about a branding guru—and a production scale that’s impressive in the genre of Australian comedy - again fitting given the subject matter. Melbourne is shot exceptionally well and has rarely looked better on film, or in real life. The film doubles as a love letter of sorts to the city, long a hub for Australian comedy talent.
As mentioned, the patented Working Dog ensemble of misfits is present, albeit transposed to an urban setting and nicely played by Daniel Henshall (an amiable contrast to his work in Snowtown), Lachy Hulme (Macbeth, Let’s Get Skase), Felicity Ward, and Christian Clark. Ben’s arc is perceptively handled and Lawson is alternately appealing and infuriating, as he should be. Given her long stretches offscreen, the role of Alex skirts dangerously close to becoming a fantasy object of affection, but Sitch and co smartly address this within the screen story—having Alex object to Ben’s idealising of her—and Taylor provides shading and dimension to the character.
As of writing, Any Questions for Ben? stands as Sitch and Working Dog’s feature swansong, a status I hope is remedied in future (though they remain industrious in television). It also serves as proof, as does Now Add Honey, that a ropey poster does not a ropey movie make … though it doesn’t do it any favours persuading punters to part with their hard-earned shekels.
Ben