Rough Stuff

This is one that I watched in passing lately, and it's a fun little filler for time.

Recycling various jokes from similar action adventure thrills into an environmental tinged movie, we have gold diggers, mysterious men, greedy capitalists, slackers and the obligatory poor little rich girl falling in love with the hunk with a heart!

So you can already figure out the storyline, so no need to go thru that.

We have here a low budget movie which is daft but fun enough. Enough jokes to keep you going despite nothing home to write home about. For the director and actors it's a good jumping point to something else (you got to begin somewhere) and in time they will look this with a smile.

As always, the film is stolen by the slackers/stoners, in this movie played by Sam Glissan ('Scraps'). He and his lady are the two best things here.

As it's derivative etc, it wasn't for me but i still went with it. Reminds me of those tv movies that used to come on on a Friday evening to fill in the time when i was a kid, and sometimes they were a lot of fun,

Look, I think you'll still go along with this. One for Saturday afternoon when nothing else is on, and you know what you'll leave with a smile.

Enjoy.

This movie is what you probably expected. It's cheezy and the whole story is written around crazy off roaders trucks. It's like 2 guys in a bar said to each other, "Hey! We like off roading. Let's make a movie about it!" And then, while still drunk, they wrote this story. Funny thing is, it ain't half bad. I loved the actors and their characters. Actually kinda enjoyed some of the 4 wheelin' stuff. Even kinda liked the fist fights. If you are bored and looking for a bearable C movie, this might be it for you. It's not half bad. // The Bushwacker 1/5/2021

Driving into local cinemas in March, Australian grown independent film (and labour of love) Rough Stuff offers up a rollicking adventure through the bushy wildlands of New South Wales and becomes one of the more exciting locally made adventures for quite some time in the process.

Debut writer/director Jonathan Adams has tapped into Australia's long time love for 4×4 driving, the thrill of getting off the main road and seeing where that may take you, and combined that with a quest for treasure, a fight for survival against a maniacal bush ranger and an environmental activist group trying to stop the big, bad corporation from destroying our natural beauty, and it all works together to combine and give Rough Stuff an unpredictable and often exhilarating narrative push.

Sure to appeal to car lovers and thrill-seekers, Adams hasn't neglected the core ingredients of a good feature film, with Rough Stuff providing a constant stream of laughs to compliment the off-road exploring, that gives us ample dirt-track car chases and some fairly hairy stunt work. Add in a bunch of characters that create a rag-tag group of heroes, anti-heroes and villains and you'll be glad you came along for the ride.

Led by Gareth Rickards as the rough and ready rover Buzz, Rough Stuff offers one of most likeable casts of misfits and miscreants we've seen in a local production for some time.

With able support from Vincent Andriano and Sam Glissan as Buzz's off-road loving sidekicks Abe and Scraps, and memorable supporting turns from Hayley Sullivan and Jamie Kristian as members of the vegan eco-group that have teamed themselves up with Buzz and his crew to bash and crash their way through the thick bushlands of the Australian landscape, Rough Stuff has somebody and something for everyone while Adams and his team behind the camera have worked hard to capture some truly stunning action and shots of the Australian vistas, that will likely have overseas watchers jumping on the nearest plane to come and explore the great outdoors that lay at our doorstep.

When Rough Stuff clicks into gear, it provides an exciting, visually spectacular thrill ride that offers up something unique and different to what we've seen in local productions before.

While its "rough" around the edges in some areas, Rough Stuff is set to be a favourite amongst the many outdoor 4×4 explorers that inhabit our fair shores, and this fun and likeable adventure is one of those rare local productions that has a broad enough appeal to become an overseas favourite as well as one of the most easily accessible films from the growing list of quality, locally made features.

3 ½ shovels out of 5

An Australian adventure; A story about a group of treasure hunters who travel into the Australian bush in search of a legendary stash of gold. Soon they face danger, lies and betrayal. This film is about 20mins too long and suffers from poor editing and poor storyboarding. While there is a good soundtrack and a fun sense of adventure as it rolls, the dialogue misfires. It has a shifting tone - it can't decide whether to be an action-comedy or a straight adventure film. We enjoy a mystery villain for a while which keeps up the tension but it drains away by the third act. A very big explosion was probably needed at the end of the convoluted plot to justify the investment in the main character. Instead we get a romance bolted on and a stub of an ending.

A film about a bunch of bush people who love four wheel drives that try and find fools gold but it never quite delivers. It's trying to be a hollywood action film drop in a hot American girl and you think you have a movie. Trying too hard to emulate 80s or 90s adventure / action films. It only delivers on some action, but the characters are boring, the dialogue not very good and the actors as well as they are good, there's nothing special happening. Don't waste your time this film is so boring even with all the adventure. The missing ingredient is EMOTION, there's nothing compelling or interesting to draw you in. It's shot well too so not too many positives here.