The Bit Part

Unforgettable moments in film - how your hard-working career hopes get creamed by a newcomer with "talent".

A solid little picture with a top cast and techs.

This was one of those obscure little films put on late at night that I happened to flick over to and very much the sort of movie to be replayed on TV just because Kidman made a go of it (when they are stuck for programming). When I saw this film, many years ago, I was delighted by it's simple tale of a person wanting to break out from his shackles (ie - a guidance councilor) to try his hand in the cut-throat word of performance.

Our guy has had anough of the game and has decided to chuck it in after countless years trying to give slack-arse students some direction. After being fed up, he tells one of his students to do what you want and when the student asks him if he's happy in his job, he realises that it's time to make a change.

Neither falling into angst-fest or the screwball comedy genre, it sits pretty well as a charming, realistic tale of giving it a go and not caring if it doesn't quite come off the way you planned.

A solid cast and well written in terms of understanding the longing to be a performer was the most memorable parts of this film and I think it would be high time to check it out for myself again.

This light comedy was much liked by David Stratton and others in the 1980s, but now it comes across as a series of dull and unfunny incidents in the life of a man who appears to have no acting talent.

Perhaps Chris Haywood is not really cut out for comedy or perhaps the film is too full of acting in-jokes that only appeal to people in the industry, or perhaps humour has changed since the 1980s.

Even the presence of a youngish Nicole Kidman, only a couple of years away from Hollywood, does not manage to save this film, although Kidman does as good a job as anyone with the script. Like so many other Aussie films of the 80s, this film is not interesting enough to warrant 90 minutes of our time.

Of course, it does not help that the only copies now available are poorly recorded from television, but I don't think even a crystal-clear copy would help much. The film predictably failed to gain a commercial release in the 80s and went straight to television.