The Dish

At a time when the comedy genre is saturated with the crude, lewd and unsophisticated toilet humour of the U.S ('See Spot Run', 'The Animal', 'Say It Isn't So'), it's encouraging to watch a film that really makes you laugh out loud without wanting to cringe at the same time. Like it's antipodean predecessor 'Priscilla...', 'The Dish' takes the best aspects of Australian culture and the Aussie persona and uses them to create the finest comedy of the year so far. Much of the humour is brutally honest, delivered in the kind of relaxed, conversational style which has become an Aussie trademark. Paired with a homegrown cast (headed by a wonderfully understated Sam Neill) and filmed on location at the satellite receiver station in South Australia, the film feels refreshingly natural and unconstructed.

This sense of cultural identity gives 'The Dish' a surprising depth for such an uncomplicated film. Rather than resorting to the contrived, exaggerated Australian image of Paul Hogan, it revels in its roots without a hint of self-consciousness or compromise. Such an intense warmth towards its small-town location and everyman characters is shown that it is impossible not to share it, and from that grows a wonderful sense of intimacy. Despite the global importance of Apollo 11's mission, a real sense of the importance of it to the community and the individuals therein is present throughout. An American film may have made this subservient to the moon landings - here, the two are intertwined on an equal footing, and you care equally about each.

And in that lies the secret of why 'The Dish' is such a damn good film. It's not the well-paced, extremely funny and well-delivered script, nor the quality of the acting, nor the great location or period soundtrack. It's because the film has a real sense of soul. It makes you want to care about it and it's characters. In mainstream film, that's a rare achievement indeed. Let's hope the Farrelly brothers are watching...

8.5/10

Sometimes I feel sorry for the people who didn't get to experience the excitement of the early days of the manned space program. The miracle of space exploration is all so routine to them, it's hard to explain what the "big deal" was all about.

This movie perfectly captures the excitement of the first manned moon landing, and does it from a point-of-view that most people never think about. It's funny: we see the images on our TV, and most of the time we never even think about how they got there. It's just TV, right? It comes out of a box (or, nowadays, a flat screen), right? It just comes through wires or through the air.

This movie is about one of the massive antenna assemblies that received the images from the Apollo XI mooncast, and about the people who made it work. And while that sounds more like something that you'd expect to see on a "how it's made" show on the Science Channel than in a movie, it's actually a wonderfully entertaining and funny movie about people who are engaging and funny, and who are doing a critical and fascinating job that made it possible for millions of people worldwide to watch, live, one of humanity's great milestone events.

And another nice thing about it: this is a FAMILY movie. There is no nudity, no violence, and although the movie has a PG-13 rating, I can't remember any language in it that was overtly offensive.

Sam Neill stars in this movie as Cliff Buxton, the guy who is in charge of the huge antenna dish that gives the movie its title. Neill is excellent in this. He does a superb job in bringing out the nuances of the character and in working with the other people in this movie. My only problem with him is that in the sequence that frames the movie, when he has to appear aged, a truly AWFUL job of makeup was done. It looked like something that might be done in an elementary school play by kids who borrowed their mom's makeup kit. Please, please try to ignore this cringe-inducing look, because it's very brief and Neill looks fine the rest of the movie.

The rest of the cast is also very good, although I don't think any of them are well-known or very familiar. They do well with the material, and there's a real sense of a group of people who like each other and care about each other, while at the same time occasionally getting on each other's nerves. They're mostly engineering/scientist types, which basically means they're aware that they're better with machines and numbers than they are with people. There's a little sub-plot involving romance that's very funny and sweet.

The tension in the movie comes from the fact that the giant antenna assembly that receives the lunar transmissions had to be pointed very precisely in order to get the reception, and that certain kinds of weather conditions made moving the giant antenna very dangerous. While most of the world was sitting in front of their TV sets, expectantly waiting for the "mooncast" to begin, there were a whole bunch of people in Australia, where the antenna was located, frantically working and making some very tough decisions to make it possible.

I have to say that the sequence when everyone is finally watching Neil Armstrong take his first steps on the moon really swept me back to when I was 12 years old and sitting spellbound on the couch in our living room, watching that shadowy shape on the TV screen make that "giant leap for mankind." I'd like to hope that maybe, through watching this movie, younger people who missed out on that magical moment will at least understand how transforming it was for the entire world. We don't have many moments like that in history. I'm glad I was there for this one. And this movie captures that moment, when just for a few heartbeats while we watched the blurry black-and-white image of a man in a spacesuit slowly coming down a ladder, literally everyone in the world was riveted and united by a sense of perfect awe.

And I'm glad this movie captures some of the magic of that particular event, and gives us some insight into what it took to bring it to the world on TV. That it almost didn't make it live onto TV was something I didn't fully appreciate until I saw "The Dish."

This is a great movie to enjoy with your family. I don't like to say "family movie," because that conjures up something silly and trivial and kid-centric, which this movie is not. I really enjoyed it and I think anyone who is into the space program or who can identify with engineers and scientists will like it too.

I am a die-hard movie buff and I had never heard of this movie until my brother brought it to Thanksgiving. After watching it I was very pleased. A very fun movie with a great story and a delightfully quirky cast. The movie is worth watching just for Rudi, the security guard. Enjoy.

This film was extremely hard for me to get into, but once I got interested, I couldn't turn away. The performances were great the story was pleasantly refreshing. After I had seen the small town Irish comedy WAKING NED DEVINE, I was in the mood for feel-good comedies. THE DISH was the next best thing. But, as it turns out, I liked THE DISH far better.

It is a small town comedy set in a rural Australian town during the days preceeding the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, it brought everyone on the Earth together. This film gives an idea as to what it must have been like to see that experience.

The film was a greatly pleasant movie and I was totally delighted to have a film as heartwarming and truly great as this. Sam Neill (JURASSIC PARK) and Patrick Warburton (SCREAM 3, BIG TROUBLE) who I feel are both very good actors take the leading roles of this delightful movie experience. Surely a film that you will want to watch over and over again. I recommend OCTOBER SKY and WAKING NED DEVINE.

THE DISH: 5/5.

The Dish delivers the way some of Michael Crichton's best novels do : Take a true story and build fiction around it so you can entertain the reader/viewer with technical accuracy and focus on the fictional characters, and the role they play. And boy, does The Dish entertain.

First credit must go to Rob Sitch's absolutely brilliant direction. On one hand it comes as no surprise that part of the old "D-Generation" line-up (Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy) wrote a comedy full of sharp wit in the tradition of the infamous "Late Show" that ran on the ABC (Ch 2) in 1992-1993. Glen's (Tom Long) question "Who's the guy ?", when Al (Patrick Warburton) volunteers his admiration for Neil Armstrong and that he'll be walking on the moon is on a par with the Late Show "It's academic" 1993 sketch where the Santo/Rob/Tom Ivanhoe College team is faced with the challenge : "How much change do you receive from 7 Dollars if you purchase 7 items at 98 Cents each ?" - Rob's answer " What are the items ? " is unforgettable.

That same team performed at its best yet when The Dish's script was written. The Dish is also quite unique as a movie that can be watched over and over again without the need to skip many parts of the story. This could mainly be attributed to the story's characters, and how we are compelled to care about each and every one of them, no matter how insignificant they might seem.

The core of The Dish revolves around Neil Armstrong's first historic steps on the Moon at 12:56 PM, Monday 21 July 1969 AEST. When 600 Million people (1/5th of mankind at that time) tuned in and witnessed the TV pictures from the Eagle Lunar Module, 3 tracking stations were receiving these signals simultaneously. They were CSIRO's Parkes Radio Telescope, Honeysuckle Creek tracking Station near Canberra and NASA's Goldstone station in California. During the first 9 minutes of the broadcast, NASA alternated between these 3 stations. When they switched to the Parkes pictures, they were of such superior quality that NASA remained with them for the rest of the 2 1/2 hour Moonwalk. Of course the audience knows the good outcome to the events, so the writers can fully focus on the fictional part of the story and remind us how human nature can marvel by putting a man on the moon and safely return him home.

The Dish is so refreshing because it doesn't need to resort to adult themes, violence or excessive profanity to flag your attention to the townfolk of Parkes, their involvement in the mission and how they are "over the moon" about it.

The film accurately portrays the spirit of Aussie people in 1969. I found the camerawork simply stunning at times, capturing the beauty of Parkes : the dusty road to the Telescope, the farmer with dog and sheep, the (empty) Fuel station and Parkes' sleepy shops. The wonderful soundtrack attends to the "missing pieces" with songs like "Good morning Star shine" and "Come on". Dramatization is resourcefully completed by Edmund Choi's composition and direction of The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (under Jane Kennedy's guidance).

The Dish succeeds in a non-pretentious and honest way to convey its great emotion and charm to the viewer. Working Dog excelled itself and surely must face great difficulty to surpass this masterpiece. "Frontline" and "The Castle" were very clever indeed, but The Dish is perceived by me as the best Australian Movie ever made, a priceless moment in Aussie Cine history.

Charles "Bud" Tingwell's cameo appearance as the Priest is the icing on the cake. The amount of research to realize the Dish must have been extensive, to adhere for example to the 2.2825 GHz Apollo 11 frequency, the solid minus 90 dBM signals etc. in the script.

It is worthwhile to note that NASA delayed the Parkes pictures by 6 seconds before its worldwide broadcast, in the event of an accident. Australian viewers saw mankind's giant leap 6.3 seconds earlier than the rest of the world !! (A 300 mS delay for the INTELSAT satellite link from Sydney,Australia to Houston,USA was incurred).

I still watch The Dish regularly and the movie, if nothing, conveys greater emotion than it first did. Highly recommended : great acting across the entire cast, almost flawless camerawork, fantastic soundtrack, fast paced yet non-engaging script, witty comedy. A treat for the whole family. 9.5 out of 10 !!!