Bad Eggs

I watched Bad Eggs with the preconception that it was a mix of serious cop drama and comedy. After watching The Late Show and listening to Martin/Molloy, Tony Martin has come to my attention again through his return to the airwaves on MMM. I am catching up on the self-confessed movie buff's interim works by watching Bad Eggs and reading his book Lolly Scramble.

Bob Franklin and Mick Molloy didn't strike me as the two best leading actors for a film, but they perform respectably within the low budget Australian comedy format. The comedy and drama are better integrated than I was expecting, Bad Eggs is basically a tale of two detectives with a capacity for ineptness and clumsiness, who get mixed up in corruption in their own department, the fictional Zero Tolerance Unit of Victoria. There probably actually are individual agencies like this now with a similar lack of transparency, with ASIO recently being expanded and given increased powers. The film gets serious when the two detectives get deeper and deeper in the poo, but the comedic elements return when they strike back with the help of Northey, played by Alan Borough.

On the whole Bad Eggs is akin to a film like True Lies on the comedy scale, it is primarily a drama with comedy arising from storyline elements rather than from deliberately inserted jokes. It never manages to excel in any particular area but what was achieved was a film with a professional look, a storyline that maintains interest for the first 90 minutes, and a cast of fairly decent Australian actors and comedians.

This movie describes itself as "a deadly serious comedy", but to me it is more of a "comedic thriller" in that the thriller aspect tends to predominate, with some laughs thrown in. It's well made, the plot being quite convoluted, and suspense maintained. Set in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, it can be compared with the movie "You Can't Stop the Murders" which was set in New South Wales. This latter film had more laughs, and less of the thriller element - but both are good movies and worth viewing. Bad Eggs gets 7 out of 10 from me.

There have been many movies made that are unintelligent spoofs of other movies. Luckily a large portion of these go straight to DVD these days, but every now and then one slips through the crack and I end up watching it. I'm always disappointed. They are littered with obvious jokes, and often look like they were ghost written by Fran Drescher. Even though I am a huge fan of Tony Martin, I was just a little sceptical that his movie wasn't just to be a cheap spoof of old Aussie cop movies. After ten minutes I knew I was onto a winner and that this movie was able to make me laugh without resorting to cheap "skit show" type humour. This movie didn't go great in the cinema, but hopefully someone gives Tony Martin a big pile of cash to make another movie. It would be a shame for Australian cinema if he didn't make another movie. Tony Martin may not be a cinematic visionary, but he knows movies and comedies, that's more than I can say for most directors. I enjoyed this movie, and it was great to not see jokes coming. Long live bad eggs.

There are a number of Australian movies around that tend to play up the typical Australian bloke or "sheila" image which quite frankly, make me want to curl up and die in embarrassment. (One of the previews I saw with this movie does nothing to make me think otherwise, a movie called Take Away). Then there are movies like Bad Eggs.

Bad Eggs tends not to try and have a laugh at us Aussies, rather, it aims (and for the most part, succeeds) in going for main stream comedy which could well work for international audiences.

If you can get past the so called "acting"(they are mostly stand up comedians, not thespians)you may end up enjoying a very witty movie, which contains quite a few sight gags, which are very funny. (The one in which the security guard is watching a send up of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? is quite hilarious)

"Imagine what you could do, with that cash bonanza of $478 dollars".

Even if you are not an Aussie, you should still find plenty to laugh at with this movie.

This is without doubt "Champagne comedy"

For the intended movie goers of Bad Eggs....Be forewarned. It's a movie with highly course language used in it. The "F" word was used so many times that you become almost immune to it. But it does make you squirm a bit,... not for the faint hearted.