Rikky and Pete

Two wealthy Australian siblings — one an attractive geologist, artist, and country-western songwriter, and the other an unmotivated mechanical whiz kid in trouble with the law — borrow their crippled mother's Bentley and leave their uptown Melbourne mansion to 'go outback', enjoying several adventures along the way, none of which amounts to much. The same writer/director team tries to repeat the luck they had with their 1986 feature 'Malcolm', but the results this time around are too relaxed and unfocused, to say the least. The travelers stop to perform some music (with support from ex-members of the Down Under pop group Split Enz), try their luck at gold mining, and build several clever mechanical toys, but like the outback itself the script ranges all over the map without arriving anywhere. The film isn't exactly pointless, but it's not exactly brimming with purpose either. There's a token crisis involving a vengeful backwoods sheriff, but with no real conflict there's no need for resolution, and the film disappears from memory almost as soon as the end credits finish rolling.

Australian cinema has always captivated me. Their cinema is refreshing. "Rikky and Pete" would revive memories of the young rebel in one's life. As a film, you cannot compare it with great cinema of top directors--yet it is charming because it captures the non-conformist in all of us. The mechanical genius Pete invents a gadget that uses the childish paper-plane concept to deliver a newspaper. The brother sister bonding is well portrayed. The jabs at soft-headed evangelists are also well done. The anti-establishment note of the film is the refrain throughout the running time--with one realistic line "I am afraid" coming from the jailed Pete after contemplating the willfully open jail door.

While the film is about cars, inventions, inefficient cops, Eartha Kitt, loonies--the work appears disjointed and immature. Yet some of the minor characters are superb. Examples are the two ladies--the young Tetchie Agbayani as Flossie (Pete's girlfriend at the mine) and Dorothy Alison as Pete's rich mother.

The element of satire that runs through conversation and actions lifts up the product to a level of above average cinema.

I saw this movie years ago, and I can still remember most of it. The newspaper delivery vehicle was great! For some reason, this movie has stuck in my memory as a movie I really enjoyed (versus the thousands of movies I've seen and either can't remember, or worse, want to and can't forget!) I hope I can catch it some time and get it on tape, as it apparently is not available at retail. In the years before the IMDb and Amazon, I can remember checking every video store I saw to see if they had a copy. Except for the non-dubbed version of "Mad Max" (which I got!), no other movie has inspired me to look for it so diligently. The Internet in this case is good and bad - good that it tells me the film is not available, and bad that it tells me the film is not available!

I have especially enjoyed Rikki and Pete for reasons difficult to analyze. Just as a skilled writer can engross and hold an audience with what may appear to be simple prose, this film, too, with its simple and wacky story line maintains an artful and absorbing balance in its dramatic elements: a panoply of "unique", interesting characters, a comical clash of modern suburbia with desert mining town ethos, the clash of inventive slacker minds in the face of both, and a lively rhythm accented by Rikki's C&W barroom singing. What serious social messages it may contain - if any - are handled lightly. After all, nothing's new under the sun - certainly not male chauvinism or sexual abuse in the workplace or generational gaps. This film concentrates on its wacky characters and mining town setting, not on such hackneyed subjects.

A masterpiece it isn't, and I won't deny it succumbs to excess toward the end, but compared to the usual empty-headed commercial stuff hyped in papers and video rental box-backs by critics of dubious loyalty (certainly none to the purchaser or to intellectual integrity) I find it nonetheless a superior piece of entertainment - deserving perhaps a 7 out of 10. Back in the 1980s when I first saw it, I would possibly have rated it higher. Despite the years, I still carry with me visions of the dart-throwing Swede, the mining boss bargaining for "lays" he'll never get, and the wild contraption R & P construct with the help of their friends to automate the mining of their own semi-fraudulent gold claim.

Hollywood has never known what to do with Asian actresses. It took an Australian woman director to bring out the full potential of the lovely Tetchie Agbayani as Pete's girlfriend in this gentle Aussie comedy. The scene where she is negotiating to get a rise out of her boss (double entendre intended) shows her to be a highly talented comic actress.

I actually saw the film because of Tetchie's participation in it, and was pleasantly surprised by the movie as a whole. It delivers quiet chuckles rather than belly laughs, but leaves you feeling good. It deserves to be more widely appreciated.