Mullet

this movie was so terribly bad that just as my girlfriend and i were getting up to leave in total disgust... it ended. a thin plot, bad acting, lifeless characters, no action or startling developments, it was by far the worst movie i've seen in a long time.

i am familiar with the area that it was filmed in, and can't say that the characters portrayed are indicative of the locals... the locals are smarter, funnier, and far better company (and i dont live around there).

well may they say god save the queen, for nothing can save the australian film industry... if they keep turning out "quality" like this.

. I did my best to like this film, and it has many good things. A reasonably tight script, a good smoldering performance from Ben Mendelssohn in the lead, fine supporting performances from Andrew Gilbert, Susie Porter, Tony Barry, Kris McQuaide and Belinda McClory, rugby league, nice countryside, stark, open, beautiful cinematography, and even a decent theme; what is there at the heart of the Aussie soul?

Well, mullet is a pretty dull fish, and this celebration of it, if that's the right word, just wasn't entertaining. The film even at 90 minutes dragged. Some contrived drama at the end came to nothing. The characters were understandable, if not likeable, but it really just amounted to pointing the camera at a group of country people and saying `tell us about the hollowness of your lives.' It is partly redeemed by a reasonably upbeat ending. It was like a film school piece made by someone with 10 years experience in the industry. It may have some resonance with Australians who have good attention spans (especially residents of Kiama), and is pretty to watch, but mullet like to swim in shallow waters, which this film never leaves.

Cor, wot a crap film! Like many others, no doubt, I went to "Mullet" expecting to see a rather humorous film. What I actually DID see was some mundane piece of rubbish that went nowhere and had me leaving the cinema scratching my head and thinking (in the words of the immortal D-Gen "Late Show" song), "What was that all about?" Basically, this movie revolves around some guy who goes back to the country town where he used to live after being away from the place for about three years. Once he gets there, what happens? Well not a lot really. He just goes around pi**ing everyone off (something that he apparently has quite a talent for), and catching mullet from one of the local rivers (an activity that proves the source of his nickname, incidentally; to my surprise, this movie had nothing whatsoever to do with mullet haircuts). Oh, and he also discovers that his old girlfriend has married his brother. Annoyingly, when he runs into this woman, the first thing she does is punch him: just another annoying example of the double standard which decrees that, when a guy so much as slaps a woman in a movie (even if she's behaving in a truly obnoxious fashion), he is evil incarnate, yet when a woman punches out a guy (usually for no other reason than because she's throwing a big childish temper tantrum), we're supposed to applaud her actions or worse, find them funny.

Anyway, without wanting to waste too much more time commenting on this film (cos it really doesn't warrant the effort; I'm only doing this because I'm bored), I'd just like to say that, while the main character is vaguely amusing at times (and has a few funny lines), this movie really isn't worth the effort. To paraphrase a quote I found scribbled on a desk in a lecture theatre back in my university days: "Mullet is about as interesting as the time Mr Boringworth won the World Water Drinking Championship in the City of Drying Paint." Go watch some long-lived radioisotopes decay instead.

Mullet is a wonderful piece of Australian cinema.

It almost perfectly captures laconic Australian humour, as its characters try to figure out how to live with each other, even if they're not always easy to deal with.

Great performances from all involved, and good laughs along the way.

Destined to become a minor classic.

Not bad as far as it goes, but it needs an ending. It's appalling how many Australian films are made without one. The worst recent offender that I know of is "Russian Doll", but it's only the most naked example - and its very nakedness, when it is set next to "Mullet", almost looks like a virtue. At least "Russian Doll" doesn't have a first-person narrator musing about how hard it is to find endings in real life, and how all endings are also beginnings, and so on, in an attempt to justify the failing.

Still, there's ALMOST an ending, and apart from that there's a fair enough story with interesting characters (more because of the cast than because of the script). I like David Caesar's rather desperate attempts to come up with fish metaphors for what's going on - and the wonder of it is, he succeeds. For the record, though, mullet, the fish, isn't so bad as all that. What little flavour it has isn't unpleasant. (You wouldn't want to have it by itself, that's all.) Worthwhile in a small way, certainly nothing to be despised. Like the film. Hey! Another fish metaphor.