`The Wog Boy' and `Head On' are both about aspects of the migrant experience of the Melbourne Greek-Australian community, but there the similarities end. While `Head On' was a frantic day in the life of a hyperactive drugged out sexual athlete, `Wog Boy' (where are the wog girls?) is the gentlest of comedies with characters and story lines familiar from a host of earlier Australian comedies `The Castle' meets `Crocodile Dundee'.
The plot scarcely matters. Mild mannered wog boy Nick (Nick Giannopoulos), unemployed but the proud owner of a restored 69 Valiant, is exposed as a dole bludger on a TV show hosted by Darren Hinch (himself) and as a result becomes involved with unscrupulous female politician Raeleen (Geraldine Turner) and her attractive assistant Celia (Lucy Bell, looking gorgeous). Raeleen has plans to exploit Nick's image in a media campaign designed to get the unemployed back to work at lower wages. Nick, on the other hand just wants to carry on helping out at the Church bingo contest and helping Greek social beneficiary seekers make their cases to the unsympathetic bureaucracy. The bureaucrats are rightly unsympathetic since Nick's star client Theo is as a transparent a welfare fraudster as there is. Celia hates Nick at first sight (though it's lust at first sight for her sister and Nick's best mate Frank), a sure sign that they will get together eventually.
The movie's strong points are its dialogue and the supporting characters, who unlike the calm Nick, are satisfyingly comic in a manic kind of way. Frank the babe magnet (Vince Colosimo) with the bedroom wall covered with Polaroids of his conquests, Raeleen the lecherous minister who goes though chauffeurs like Kleenex, Theo the tireless fraudster, the Vietnamese pizza delivery boys who aspire to be latin lovers, Cousin Dominic the gambling pharmacist with the Speed lab in his basement, Yugoslav Tony the would-be Carlton drug baron, Shazza and Bazza the car-loving cops, and Darren the public servant nerd with a crush on Celia all provide us with a chuckle or two each. As to the dialogue, one line stood out. Tony, doing a spot of debt collection, says: `Listen. I'm half Serbian and half Croatian. When I wake up in the morning I want to kill myself. Give me my money!' Actually, Nick has a chat up line that provides a running gag throughout the film but it would spoil it to repeat it here.
Old stereotypes are exhibited in a way that demonstrates that they have lost whatever power they had to determine outcomes for people. This tends to a tepid result the migrant battle for acceptance is virtually over, so we can all feel an inner warm glow at what an accepting and tolerant society we are. If only that could be said for our relationship with the aboriginal people.
