barney19

The first half of this film is a fun, frenetic romp full of hilarious dialogue and cheekiness. This shall be known as 'the good bit'. Then comes the second half. And just like a kid fuelled on red cordial, the buzz ends sooner than you want to, and with Moulin Rouge, crikey did it end. Unfortunately, the buzz ended exactly at the halfway mark. This shall be known as 'the bad bit.' From that moment on, this is some of the most boring film-making in the history of the world. The good bit -- with Ewan in fine form, Nicole doing a lovely job pretending to sing and the cast so brim full of energy you could power a small town on their vibrations -- neatly glosses over the absolute lack of story. Well, the thinnest story imaginable. But as a chorus of suited blokes would sing, "it's not about the story, it's about love and clever use of modern songs in a turn-of-the-century setting". How much that matters is up to you. The comes the bad bit. When the film comes to a grinding halt in the middle, the bit when it decides to try and be a real movie and less of an experience, this is when you should stick knitting needles in your eyes. The life, soul and spirit is sucked out of proceedings harder than something I can't write here but involves one of the many prostitutes in the film. A shame. Moulin Rouge is a red-hot go at a musical, but realises midway through proceedings that it just can't go on, when in fact it should have.

Devil At Your Heels, or DAYH, is an amazing piece of work. Some argue it is fact, others fiction. I prefer to sit on the fence and simply marvel at the beauty that is the life of Ken Carter, the self-proclaimed world's best stuntman. He is good, if your definition of good is overweight, underprepared and gutless. In DAYH, Ken wants to jump a car from the USA to Canada. Why, only God knows. But he manages to get a ramp built and get his hands on a dodgy looking rocket car. All he has to do now is drive it up that ramp...which is the tricky part. A truly life-changing production, DAYH comes highly recommended. By me, anyway. And my mate Adam. He loves it too.

Strange Planet is set in Sydney and is the story of six twenty-something young folk -- three girls, three boys. If you're thinking "Oh, it's an Aussie version of Friends", you'd be right, and wrong.

What Strange Planet has over the sit-com is characters who you can sort of like, and not want to punch. Unfortunately, as much as you want to like them, they're let down by some appalling writing, especially for the male characters. Tom Long does well with what little he has, while Jeffries and Williamson make do. Of the girls, Claudia Karvan acts Watts and Garner off the screen. Why Karvan isn't a huge star is one of life's great mysteries.

While Strange Planet is hard to dislike, it leaves you with a sickly feeling, not unlike after eating an entire packet of jelly babies. And the ending -- holy mother of... Has there ever been a more tooth-rotting conclusion to a film that has tried so hard to make you like it? No. This is one of those 'close but not really' efforts -- all it needed was a better, punchier, cleverer script with just a touch of insight into the psyche of men. is it worth seeing? Maybe, but for what it's worth, it's still better than Friends.