Mr. Reliable

This film failed terribly at the box office. It's a really funny film. Colin friel's appearance, should've brought people in. Jacqueline Mackenzie is wonderfully cast. Despite being made in 1996, it depicts an bygone era, of the '60's.

I tripped over this today & had never heard of it but I said "Hmmm, Colin Friel, comedy? Let's give 'er a shot". As the previous poster said, it's along the lines of The Castle, and a few others from Down Under: The Dish, Strictly Ballroom, and Danny Deckchair. When the titles rolled I said "That was nice. I feel good." Can't ask for much more than that when you trip over a movie you've never heard of.

BTW, the quote "If you were my husband I'd poison your soup" was actually spoken at a dinner party by Lady Astor to Winston Churchill, but his reply was "Madam, if I were your husband, I would gladly drink it."- from the National Lampoon's 1973 "Wit & Witticisms of Winston Churchill

I am probably over critical of most Australian movies, basically on account of the cringe factor, ie,"Gees, they're not going to show THAT somewhere else, are they." Once in a while though, you come across a domestic gem, like "Muriels Wedding", "The Dish", "The Castle", and "Paperback Hero", which I just love to bits, and they seem to put the Australian idiom into some kind of sense, and I love ém. Well anyway, I just found another one to add to that list."Mr Reliable." I remember the incident in the late sixties, when Wally Mellish held his girlfriend/de facto, Beryl Muddle (Yes folks, they were their real names) up in a hostage situation for 5 or 6 days, and it was the talk of the media for a long while. Anyway, it is a lovely, funny, easy to watch little movie that is well worth wasting a couple of hours of your life on. I doubt very much whether Wally was such a likable idiot in real life, and Beryls legs probably didn't go all the way to the ground like they did in the movie, but it is a good watch. You can see the various scrapes that they get into coming a mile away, which really only give the whole thing a sense of inevitability. And it is a great snapshot of mid sixties Australia, in so many respects. The summer heat, the cars, the crowds, the emerging hippy culture, the xenophobia as regards "new Australians", the black and white television. Well worth a look.

I saw Mr. Reliable a long time ago, and I remember it left me with a good feeling. It's about a misunderstanding between the main character and the police, which leads to many funny situations.

Most of the action in the film took place in the house where Wally and his girlfriend were in and its surroundings, and even so the film was never boring. The main characters where likable, so there were lots of suspense as you wondered what would happen to them next, since they were surrounded.

The best of the film, in my opinion, begins when people and reporters gather outside the house: it provided amusing moments, which sometimes could give the viewer a nostalgic feeling.

I had seen this film before and avoided it - suspecting it would leave me cringing. I did it a great injustice. This movie is very much in the vein of recent Aussie successes such as The Castle, and Muriel's Wedding - movies that take pride in the dry, wry, and laconic Aussie perspective on life. It had all the basic ingedients of a fun flick, charm, humour, good characters, bit of romance, and an interesting plot with a clever ending. If you see it, give it a try - you, like me, could be surprised. My vote 7/10