Future Schlock

This low-budget film has some laughs and good satirical ideas, but overall is not as clever as it thinks it is, and poor acting, poor production, and unfunny silliness make most of the film a bit of an unattractive, unconvincing bore. The film has a very 80s post-punk inner-city sensibility, and Maryanne Fahey went on to a successful career in TV comedy, but the film is of very marginal interest now.

Set in the near future after the "middle class revolution of 1990", two nightclub performers from a working class ghetto spend their days tricking the gullible middle class suburbanites in this offbeat Australian comedy. Some of the duo's pranks are just plain silly (putting lobsters in toilet bowls) but the majority of pranks sharply poke fun at how unquestionably compliant the post-revolutionary suburbanites have become, with couples fleeing their homes after being told on television that every brick ever made is faulty. The nightclub duo also trick suburbanites into burying cars and painting children green (!). In addition to this delightful satirical edge, the film is a magnificent feat of art direction with a crazy sideways house in which the duo reside: light fixtures and tiles on opposite walls and a doorway on the side. The film would have been better though without a side plot involving two middle class police officers tracking down the pranksters. One of them talks with a poorly dubbed squeaky voice akin to nails on the chalkboard while the other is obsessed with height - neither of which makes for particularly funny running gags. A more interesting supporting character comes in the form of a suburbanite who briefly joins the duo after enjoying their sense of humour at a party that they crash, but truth be told, leads Mike Bishop and Mary-Anne Fahey are charismatic enough on their own to carry the film, balancing bizarre cabaret routines with memorable scenes in which they stick it to the conformist suburbanites who have grown afraid to think for themselves.