Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla

A great thrill ride of a film, telling the mental disintegration of an ice cream salesman who has developed an unhealthy obsession for the central female character of a Home and Away style TV soap story. Depicts very effectively the sordid and lonely lifestyle of the main character but with touches of warmth and perverse humour throughout.

Not easily classified into any genre but a mix of dark comedy, psychological thriller, human drama, revenge horror and even spaghetti style western. It is not always clear where the lines, if any between reality and delusion are drawn in the increasingly fractured world of Warren (played with absolute conviction by Glenn Maynard) but it all builds to a cathartic and brutal finale.

One not to be missed in a world of formulaic, middle of the road and average cinema.

So this won a lot of awards... if the awards are for: DULL. LIFELESS. BORING. SLOW. GO NOWHERE STORY. MIND-NUMBING. WHAT THE HECK IS SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPENING. I'd vote for it in an instant! I can't believe that one of the best magazines around, Rue Morgue, said this was worth watching. Maybe under the influence of cannabis or other harder substances. I watched it and wish I could apply bleach to the brain cells that will never let me forget this. The main character, a creepy ice-cream man, obsessed with a soap star, is creepy from the moment he walks on camera. How creepy? Know how in the first shining, Jack Nicholson looks like a maniac from the second he appears? Well that creepy. Other than that, and waiting and waiting for something to move this along, it's just a dull, dull, dull movie. But, in today's world, where everyone gets a trophy... I can see how this won some awards.

It starts off a bit iffy but once it gets into the plot it is a very intriguing film.

Gray Maynard is great in this film. The jerk off scenes are equally hilarious, disgusting and sad.

This is a great story about obsession.

The directing is very original and well done and so is the script you really start to care for Warren.

It catches you off guard by being absurd.

I have never seen a film before that uses a TV show in a movie as a learning toll for the plot . The video diary's are greatly done and you really start to see Warren in a different light. These videos were inspired by an actual stalkers video diary's.

So, I came across this by accident. I never saw a trailer or promotional for it. I almost never like anything the first time I watch it. You can't help but think Warren is a little creepy at first, but as the movie progressed I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. He's a nice guy, slightly delusional at times, but a bit misunderstood. Long story short, when we see Warren's situation getting worse, I couldn't help but to have empathy for him. People can only be pushed so far before they get fed up. Without any coping skills, Warren goes off the rails in a full blown trainwreck. The best way to describe it would be, Bljork stalker-like. I can understand why some people won't like it but I thats why they make chocolate and vanilla, and maybe strawberry<........ugh lame pun, sorry.

If this is comedy, it is of a very dark sort: it does cover territory that Bad Boy Bubby did with more verve but, to it's credit, it has a unique take that is less surreal and is more a vignette than a tale. This movie is a huge easter egg hunt for fans of Australian (and NZ) cinema. For example; it is very much a twisted homage to the "man alone" genre, so the decor of the main character's house references the 70s/80s, when that genre ruled antipodean cinema. Don't let this put you off if this is terra incognita, the characters are very universal and the strokes very broad.

Definitely worth seeing, ignore the negative reviews, you can see that they are from writers who expect a healthy measure of saccharine in the recipe. If you don't have a sweet tooth, this movie is a rewarding dish; the flavours are simple and bitter. This is its greatest achievement; proving that a film doesn't have to be a melange of complex themes and complex characters to be a tasty dish.