Doing Time for Patsy Cline

A meandering tale of a young Australian would-be country singer (Matt Day) on his way to Nashville to claim his fortune. In a little too unbelievable turn of events, he hitches a ride with a couple of con artists on the lam. He falls for the girl (Otto) and goes to prison with the guy, to cover for her.

Day's subdued obsessions is the charm of the film. His knack for country is not. Told in a needless twisted series of flashbacks and flashforwards, the story is not so much confusing as it is boring since we are revealed the inevitable climax early on.

A large part of the film spent with Day and the con man in a small outback jail, hence the name "doing time." The stereotypical characters in jail with them, Day and the con man's banal insights, and the unbelievably mixed attitude of the cops make this chunk of the film difficult to sit through. Indeed the audience is forced to do time.

I thought of Dickens and 'it's a far, far better thing...'. Yes, of course it comes across a tad corny but that's to set you up for the end. This is the film that got a country music hating pedophile into Patsy Cline and that can't be a bad thing. As for the comment about Mum and Dad being from either a beer commercial or the fifties, I can assure you I went on country holidays at grandma's sisters and second cousins' houses that could have been acting coaches for those two. It's also a film that gives you a real belly laugh about five times through it. Not many films that aren't marketed as full-on comedies give you that.

Bush boy Ralph plans to travel to the big smoky city, catch a flight to Nashville and bingo! A new country singer star is born. But, unfortunately for him, he meets up with fast talking Boyd and sweet Patsy. The law gets a whiff of them and the boys end up in a country jail, hence the title. For young Ralph this becomes an experience that will improve his country music lyrics about standard issues of prison, women and the hard life. A pleasant comedy that wobbles on its legs towards the end. Roxburgh excels as Boyd, helped with a fine script by Kennedy. The catchy song is a bonus.

It's too bad that the sweet little "Doing Time For Patsy Cline" only finally got commercial release in the U.S. in 2006, because its premise has gotten a bit dated in a post-Keith Urban/Jamie O'Neal world where Aussies have now taken Nashville by storm. It's not that crazy a fantasy for a kid to dream of getting from the bush to Music City.

The structure of the film musically turns around two parallel road movies, one a picaresque tour of the back roads of a northern New South Wales peopled with eccentric characters, and the other a fantasy "Wizard of Oz"-like imagining them all as alter-egos seeking fame and fortune in country music, intentionally mimicking Johnny Cash's bio (as later more seriously filmed in "Walk the Line").

The fantasy scenes are amusing satires of country music's rags to riches stereotypes of singers, managers and performances. But even the reality scenes are amusing satires of country bumpkins vs. Sydney sophisticates, salt of the earth station families vs. drug dealers. The prison blues jokes do get a bit repetitive as the film goes on a bit too long in going through every jail and jail music cliché.

Matt Day is personable and cute as "Ralph", the central kid with a guitar, a song and a dream, and his dreams are adorable. But the film is pretty much stolen by the scheming couple who pick him up as a hitchhiker, particularly motormouth Richard Roxburgh as "Boyd" who gets surprisingly more appealing and human as the film goes on. Miranda Otto as the object of their affections does Marilyn Monroe-like wide-eyed sexy yet somehow innocent very nicely, and has a surprisingly nice singing voice.

The song selections are a lovely mix of originals by the other Peter Best, covers of country classics and non-commercial country selections, such as by Emmy Lou Harris.

This film is like a country version of "Rock Follies", the British miniseries that satirized rock 'n ' roll fantasies.

This movie is worth seeing for the music alone (if you like Country).

The plot is predictable, the mix between reality and fantasy gets very annoying after a while. In spite of this, it is an enjoyable movie on the whole, due mainly to the charm of the main characters.

The stereotypical "Mum and Dad" are right out of a beer commercial (or a 1950s Australian film). In fact the whole movie seems to be more like something made in 1955 than 1997. With most movies made these days with the international market in mind, it is surprising that someone made one that would be totally confusing to anyone other than an Australian.