When penning my review of Black and White, starring Robert Carlyle, I was reminded of my two theatrical viewings of The Full Monty: one in a packed theatre with patrons lapping up the film, the other a few weeks later in a large theatre with less than a dozen, far more polite punters. As a dumb teen, I took away the wrong lesson: that the film didn’t work/wasn’t successful outside a packed auditorium. As an adult, I have a more rounded appreciation of the film and its grace notes that aren't dependent on an enthused opening weekend crowd—the thoughtful, non-condescending working-class milieu it sketches (much more effective and less caricatured than the likes of Billy Elliot), the lovely work from Lesley Sharp, and so on—but the two distinct viewings remain an instructive lesson in the role of an audience in galvanizing each other and collectively elevating a film experience [1].
Malcolm (1986) is a film I’ve also watched twice—albeit at home and with a much longer interval between viewings—and it’s a film that, like The Full Monty, would be a rollicking good time in a packed auditorium. It also shares with that film a fairly well-realized working-class setting, a bold money-making scheme, a likeable underdog protagonist, a ne'er do well who ends up doing well, and a handful of rousing feel-good moments conducive to audience cheer.
Directed by Nadia Tass (Mr. Reliable) and written by Tass’s husband David Parker (the two also collaborated on The Big Steal), the film centres on Malcolm (Colin Friels), an inventor [2], tram enthusiast and socially inept idiot savant who loses his job as a tram builder. To make ends meet, Malcolm takes in two lodgers at his deceased mum’s house: criminal Frank (John Hargreaves, withholding his considerable charm) and his waitress girlfriend Judith (Lindy Davies). The lonely Frank warms to the pair and, after learning Frank is a thief, invents remote-controlled machines to commit armed robberies.
Malcolm is very recognizably a product of the 1980s: not just in its depiction of Melbourne, but tonally in the way it straddles adult and family fare. On the one hand, there’s coarse language, Frank is hot-tempered and just shy of dangerous, and the good guys are bank robbers. In this respect, Malcolm belongs to a genealogy of Antipodean criminals-as-anti-heroes on film—see also the multiple films and parody films about Ned Kelly, Chopper, Tass's own Mr. Reliable—and general Australian anti-authoritarian posturing (I say posturing because it is largely performative and divorced from a reality where state premiers like Daniel Andrews and corporate fat cats like Alan Joyce get away with murder).
On the other hand, the film delights in Malcolm’s oddball inventions and many of the jokes are juvenile. Ultimately, the film successfully straddles its two camps and forms a cohesive and charming—if admittedly slight and inconsequential—whole, aided by a very amiable (and AFI Award-winning [3]) performance by Friels, who hosted Play School in 1980 but would rarely play again to a decidedly young demographic.
Ben
[1] These reminisces also led to the discovery
of a Full Monty sequel mini-series that debuted this year. Buyer beware.
[2] Malcolm was not the only Australian release of 1986 featuring a misfit inventor: Yahoo Serious' Young Einstein also debuted that year.
[3] The film swept—or more accurately coasted on its charms through—the 1986 AFI Awards, winning all its nominated categories: Picture (beating The Fringe Dwellers), Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Screenplay, Editing, and Sound. The Full Monty, for all its scrappy appeal, stood little chance of doing the same against Titanic, LA Confidential, and As Good as It Gets.