The End of the Golden Weather

This is a New Zealand drama about young Geoff Crome (Stephen Fulford) who meets Firpo (Stephen Papps), an odd guy who dreams of being an Olympic athlete.

The friendship of the two leads is odd but touching. Firpo's Olympic aspirations along with Geoff's imagination of medieval times provide a creative but odd mix. Throw in the loving parents (Paul Gittins and Gabrielle Hammond) and the love-hate relationship between Geoff and his younger brother (David Taylor), you will get quite the dose of dramatic misadventures.

Much of the characters' acting is whimsical with a childlike innocence.

This can be both touching and annoying at times, especially having to deal with the Firpo character's yells, screams, and squeals. You will definitely have to suspend reality to soak in movie's entire beachside setting, Firpo's Olympic fantasies, and Geoff's imaginative medieval world. While the story is touching, the plot does drag at times.

There is a racing scene which will make you root for Firpo, but of course, the harsh feeling of reality sets in afterward. But this movie does remind you it is OK to escape the sufferings of reality at times and let your imagination take center focus. That is what all we have sometimes to escape this harsh world.

While this movie might be obscure to most Americans, those who watch it might find some familiar actors if they're into the Hercules and Xena fame: Lucy Lawless, Ray Henwood, Alison Bruce, and David Taylor.

Grade B-

In comparison to other outsider-friedship films, this movie from New Zealand belongs to the better ones, though I know that particularly in this corner of the world, outsider movies are frequently produced („Spider & Rose`, „Heavenly Creatures`). Also especially in Australian and New Zealand movies the characters are particularly weird. When in the beginning of „The End of the Golden Weather`, Geoff comes across that fat woman with a terribly jarring voice and then her tiny sister, somehow I wasn't surprised at all. Got used to that.

So, it's true that much is typical in this film. The extremeness of New Zealand's characters can still be quite enervating though. Apart from that, it's an unusual way the movie takes. The fact that Firpo, Geoff's friend, is a complete idiot, is so obvious and explicitly acted out by Stephen Papps that it makes no sense to try and present him as anything else, and besides, nobody knows what made him so mentally retarded. The way the two guys deal with their outsider position, the development of their friednship and the inevitable ending are sensitively worked out, I was surprised how sensitively, because as I said, at first sight all the characters are rather awkward.

On the whole, an interesting movie, not everybody might like it, others will be moved to tears. I give it a ranking of 7 out of 10.

Oh what a romp. Oh sure it is ridiculous. But it's very clever. And the acting is wonderful. And it has quite a bit of fantasy. It certainly produces a lot of memories that I wish had gone that well. It's certainly a very pale movie. Oh and a bit of religious philosophy thrown in here and there. It reminds me of being a kid and other kids would have a fraction of some religious concept they had heard and could not explain it very well so we didn't know if they knew something or what was going on. Like I remember a kid telling us that saying the word "God" was a sin and of course he was saying the word in order to tell us and anyway. And that crazy character reminds me of Johnny Rotten. Is he imaginary?

While this is a very New Zealand film, the characterizations of the boy and his family were sustained right to the end. We could have had a "feel-good" ending, but Mason, rightly, chose not to give us that.

I grew up in NZ, and the "feel" of the family's characters are captured very nicely, as were the eccentricities and insensitivies of some of the characters. An excellent family film.

The most warming thing about reading the other comments was that the authors referred to the New Zealand quality of the story and the characters. New Zealand is like so many places on earth, yet it is unique, there are many places of which NZ reminds me, but not one place on earth that I have seen visited or lived in, has ever reminded me of NZ.

Mune is not only passionate about NZ and its place in the world of the arts, he is one of the most theatrically minded and astute artists I have ever known. Not only a very fine actor, he also writes directs and mentors.

Bruce Mason was one of New Zealand's most important play-writes and IMHO the most deeply connected and spiritual commentator on New Zealand's social and deep seated development as a nation. A view drawn almost entirely from the soul of its people.

This film gives everyone the opportunity to experience the combined work of one of the nations greatest writers/play-writes in Mason, and one of its great directors as well as its greatest theatrical commentator in Mune.

Treat this film like a true friend and take Polonious' advice, "grapple(it)to thy soul with hoops of steel".