Criminal Ways

'The Wannabes,' in my opinion was one of THE best comedies of 2003. It had me in stitches laughing for most of the movie. People are saying that 'The Wannabes' was a disappointment, well I say... they are totally wrong! I loved the movie. I highly recommend 'The Wannabes' but just a warning... don't take anyone under the age of 12. I saw it at 11, some parts were inappropriate for an 11 year old to see but overall, I enjoyed it. I give 'The Wannabes' 8.5 out of 10.

This was a great idea. But the over the top characters and the 2nd half of the film where the hysterical Aurora steals the child is a case study of what is wrong with Australian film.

The idea of criminals becoming a hugely popular children's group is clever and could have played our really well if the comedy had come from the real conflicts and characters rather than resorting to a ridiculous subplot that looks completely tacked on.

It amazes me what gets made in this country.

I loved Wogboy, Nick Giannopoulos' earlier hit. The Wannabes was a major disappointment to me. Wogboy came from where the writer understood and has successfully used this genre over the past 15 or so years on stage and TV.

The Wannabes starts of with some badly drawn characters "the world's worst actor", cardboard cutout crims and the obvious bad girl with the heart of gold for love interest. Needless to say, everything else follows the formula.

Many ideas should and would have been discarded with re-writes, the "Flashdance" reference is one and their big break where they are "discovered" just left me confused for the mess that was on the screen.

Don't take the kids as it's language content is definitely not for the kids but can adults sit through guys doing a bad Hi-5 imitation without the cute girls to look at?

There are a lot of awful films made around the world this year. In 2003, "The Wannabes" stands shoulder to shoulder with the worst.

A pathetic film that tried to cover too many comedy concepts and failed through all of them.

"Angry" would be the emotion I felt after seeing this film. Why? Because Film Victoria was a financial backer of this film, so, as an Australian taxpayer, I have contributed money to rubbish.

A glance of the cover of "The Wannabes" in the video store was enough to confirm this film would be rubbish. I wasn't so stupid to actually hire it, but did waste two hours of my life watching it on free to air TV.

While Nick Giannopoulos and his friends proved successful in Melbourne with theatre such as "Wogs Out of Work" and the TV series "Acropolis Now", the idea has well and truly run out of steam. And yet Giannopoulos continues to peddle the same concepts in production after production.

Film Victoria, the Film Finance Corporation and any other Australian film funding body would be highly irresponsible to finance any more projects by this production team.

In fact, I've just emailed the Melbourne Film Office with "do not finance" plea to any further Nick Giannopoulos projects. I urge you to do the same.

The only positive thing about this film is that it did employ a production crew, so kept food on the table for a couple of dozen Victorians. Perhaps that was the basis for the MFO giving it the funding go ahead. But, it probably made those crew make mental notes to never produce a lame film like this themselves.

Can I be any more frank? I think the only amusing thing about this film is reading the scathing reviews on IMDb about it.

After seeing this abuse, I can't help but be sorry for the money I spent to see the Wannabes. Nick G has been believing that he can't fail. I can assure anyone reading this, he has failed.

Someone has to let him know.

He failed to engage me in the characters, he failed to make be believe the events and he even failed to follow the simple rules of story telling.

This flick is for no one, too crude for tots and too stupid for adults. There is nothing in this film for anyone.

The slight nod to an international audience was even a debilitation to the movie, and God knows what anyone should think of The Australian Film Industry if this crud gets seen abroad.

A total embarrassment.