Gemima

When my friend and I stumbled across this video and watched it we were shocked we'd never heard of it before. I later read it was a complete FLOP when it was released (despite some big name actors).

Not only is this film interesting to me as a "spot them before they were stars" exercise (Gwyneth Paltrow, Heather Graham) but a "catch them during their brief period of fame" (Jamie Walters, Becky's boyfriend from Darlene, Jeremy Jackson). I still really don't understand why it was so unsuccessful as it contains all the same clichéd ingredients as most successful 80s teen flicks.

It's got the classic set up of good looking, broody male "outsiders" rebelling against the establishment via rock'n'roll and romance. It's set in the late fifties and has plenty of fun, sexy and dramatic montages set to dark rock'n'roll songs.

It's not a great film but it's certainly just as bad as Footloose and Dirty Dancing. If you enjoyed either of those I recommend you check this out (particularly if you're female and aged between 12-16). It's tap your foot to the songs, totally enjoyable fluff.

This movie has some pretty heavy themes: life, death and our random, sometimes cruel existence. I personally was impressed to see that this movie avoided aiming for any clichéd "transcendant" or "uplifting" scenes. It also didn't have any of the self-conscious 'perfectly imperfect' moments you see in films attempting to be realistic. What you got was a very Australian mix of ugliness, color, bad behavior, intelligence, harshness, heat and banality. The male roles were in particular some of the best written I've ever seen in an Australian film and the acting was excellent. But the female actresses really shone, especially Justine Clark who's face perfectly suited the film's understated beauty and honesty. The animation probably helped to break up the emotion and distance us a little from the characters at times we needed to be. The film earned my respect by not insulting my intelligence and trying to 'change my life' but in the end it is an amazingly beautiful and refreshing two hours.

This film harked back to the 80s style action movie - where the hero defeats hundreds of faceless henchmen and never seems to run out of ammo - but didn't even have the good grace to poke fun at itself for doing so.

"Action" films of recent times have realised that you need to have either pretty spectacular explosion/fight sequences or some decent humour packed in to keep viewers happy and this film had neither. It did have Brad and Angelina but their sexiness was not increased by their proximity to each other.

Some have likened it to True Lies and in my opinion True Lies was far superior in every possible filmic measure. True Lies had a much more interesting and engaging plot, it was funnier, it was sexier (the pole dance scene is hotter than anything in Mr and Mrs Smith) and when True Lies settled down to do some old school "action" it was impressive and imaginative.

Mr and Mrs Smith was not funny, not sexy and the action scenes were not worthwhile at all considering this was an "action" film.