Came a Hot Friday

This is an an enjoyable, pleasant, simple romp through the New Zealand country side and bush in the 1940s; Marshall Napier steals the show as the bad guy - Billy T James would have done, for his eccentric performance as the Tainui Kid, but you need subtitles to understand him. The script is crisp and has some great one-liners but some of the acting is a little on the amateur side and Ian Mune's direction, as always, lacks any real spark. The quality of the story lifts the film above that. Incidentally, for the benefit of a previous poster, Billy T James, as the Tainui kid, is a Maori, not an 'Aboriginal' which is not a socially respectable term anyway. Aborigines are found in Australia, a couple of thousand miles away.

I haven't seen too many movies from New Zealand. Those that I've seen have been so good that I rarely miss a chance to see another one. Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider, Piano, Smash Palace, Rain, Starlight Hotel... very different movies, but each of them at least good, never a waste of time, offering things to think and discuss about, having messages...

But all what's good comes to end. Came a Good Friday is a movie that doesn't fit in almost anything I've said about NZ movies.

I like comedies. Maybe I've expected too much, but I've smiled three times and never opened my mouth for laughter.

The basic idea is manifestly similar to The Sting, but as Friday was made after a novel written before Hill made his movie the authors can't be blamed for stealing. Instead of that, we can be surprised that they decided to make it after The Sting became so famous and people can compare the movies.

Hill's plot takes place in a big American town, Mune's in New Zealand village, so the characters are very different. Interesting thing is that Hill's more than 2 hours long movie doesn't look so congested by characters, though settled in Chicago, while Mune seems to have need to show every single person who might live in this village. At least half of them were the burden that disabled better understanding and developing of the other half.

This insistence in offering a wide spectrum of different people that are rather typical (or cliché?) for such a milieu makes us remember Czechoslovakian cinematography from 60's and 70's, from Menzel to Chytilova, or even 90's and a bit more urban like Sverak, Steindler or Hrebejk. Their humor also wasn't loud, intense, it was in fact often bitter or sad. But the plot of their movies was deeply local and realistic, and didn't try to force us to laugh by a story that first like deja vu repeats funny idea from Sting, and later introduces a Maor character that would fit in Mel Brooks or Abrahams-Zucker movies and no way in early Forman. Swedish and Italian 70's and 80's movies also often depicted many characters in provincial cities, but usually concentrated on few of them (with mostly local people in major roles); these movies were frequently dramas with strong social ground and not pale comedies where both social and personal relations are used only as clichés.

Though I, except in extremely rare occasions, never quit watching a movie once I decide to see it, I was really tempted this time.

Okay, it's not as successful as Hercules or Xena, Warrior Queen... But the NZ film industry can be justifiably proud of this production - it's a great laugh with the performance of the late Billy T James as the Kid stealing the show. Taniwha, dodgy bets, the bookie at the pub, listening to the TAB results on the National Programme - it couldn't have been made anywhere but NZ.

This is a rollicking comic adventure set in 1949 against a background of horse-racing and crap games in a seedy backwater not unlike Woop Woop, Australia. Wes and his sidekick. Cyril are two down under confidence men who have been than successful in cheating bookies over hill and dale in New Zealand. The bad luck gets worse when they arrive in a dusty run down town in a rattle-trap junker of an automobile that is in critical need of a primer and paint-job after they arrive at the local gin-mill that offers dance and a so-called "casino." Before the dice stop rolling, Wes and Cyril find themselves at odds with local law enforcement and the casino boss. Just as Wes wins with a last toss of the "bones," the town constable shows up and raids the joint, the casino boss took off with the money which the boys try to recover later with a dim-witted overgrown lughead known as the "Tainula Kid," an absolute zero on the scale of one to ten. In and out of the picture we glimpse a character that appears to be a Mexican Vaquero, who comes into full view at the end of the motion picture, really an Aboriginal who believes he is Latin American and missing a few screws. The bad guy dies in an explosion and everyone lives happily ever after except for Wes and Cyril who have to motor to the next village for slim pickings. The "Tainula Kid" ends up with a shinny red rag-top (convertible) and the local girl while he buys his father a new artificial leg. Who would have expected such great comedy in New Zealand like this? Maybe in Australia? This is a must-rent-see video!

When I wasn't clutching at my stomach or peering through tears in my eyes, all because I was laughing so hard, I was actually able to watch the film. What great fun! There are some classic moments that truly epitomize humor in the film industry. The New Zealand team that produced this film should be proud of such a silly accomplishment. Great film, lots of laughs. This is one that I will enjoy over and over!