paston

The concept behind this film sounds quite interesting: a maverick student joins an exclusive private school and upsets its tradition-bound power structures. It could have been quite good, in an If sort of fashion. But somewhere it all just went a bit wrong.

Ian McFadyen is excellent as the tyrannical teacher nicknamed "The Spider". The film lights up whenever he's on screen, alternately taunting and teasing his students. Liam Nunan gives good value as the misfit catalyst for change, Julian Mitchell. The rest of the cast is a bit variable, but mostly provides adequate support.

Unfortunately the storyline goes off in some odd directions which aren't really believable, and like many an Australian film it doesn't end properly. The editing is a bit lumpy, with odd fades to black here and there (presumably to facilitate a TV screening with ad breaks). The film is obviously shot on the cheap, and it shows in the occasional poor grading of shots. More obviously, one never gets a sense that there's much of a school behind the one senior year the film focuses on, due to a lack of other students and teachers.

Worth seeing once, if only for McFadyen's performance. But I think the director and screenwriter owe us a few R&Rs.

Really just not good enough. Certainly not good enough for prime time on ABC1. It would barely pass muster tucked away late at night on ABC2.

The fundamental problem here is that almost every sketch is based on a "Wouldn't be funny if..." premise, and then goes on to illustrate that premise in a deadly unfunny manner with as few jokes as possible in order to beat any possible humour out of the concept. The gag twists are always painfully obvious and can be seen coming a mile off. It's acted and directed like a series of faux-dramatic vignettes, allowing for little comedy to arise from the presentation of the material.

This series been promoted as containing dark, edgy humour. The writers seem to think that shoehorning the occasional reference to AIDS or cancer makes it so, but there's precious little genuinely dark comedy on display. One promising sketch in episode two, set on an aircraft with two annoying kids, had the potential to go much further and much darker, which would have given the punchline more power, but the creative team pulled their punches instead.

Ultimately this is a joyless, jokeless wasteland. I thought the ABC had reached the nadir of sketch comedy with the ill-fated Flipside, but The Elegant Gentleman's etc has plumbed a new low.

Next time, ABC, before you commission a sketch comedy show, get the writers to sit down and watch some of the successful comedies of the last 50 years to see how it should be done.