Bad Eggs

I watched Bad Eggs with the preconception that it was a mix of serious cop drama and comedy. After watching The Late Show and listening to Martin/Molloy, Tony Martin has come to my attention again through his return to the airwaves on MMM. I am catching up on the self-confessed movie buff's interim works by watching Bad Eggs and reading his book Lolly Scramble.

Bob Franklin and Mick Molloy didn't strike me as the two best leading actors for a film, but they perform respectably within the low budget Australian comedy format. The comedy and drama are better integrated than I was expecting, Bad Eggs is basically a tale of two detectives with a capacity for ineptness and clumsiness, who get mixed up in corruption in their own department, the fictional Zero Tolerance Unit of Victoria. There probably actually are individual agencies like this now with a similar lack of transparency, with ASIO recently being expanded and given increased powers. The film gets serious when the two detectives get deeper and deeper in the poo, but the comedic elements return when they strike back with the help of Northey, played by Alan Borough.

On the whole Bad Eggs is akin to a film like True Lies on the comedy scale, it is primarily a drama with comedy arising from storyline elements rather than from deliberately inserted jokes. It never manages to excel in any particular area but what was achieved was a film with a professional look, a storyline that maintains interest for the first 90 minutes, and a cast of fairly decent Australian actors and comedians.

For the intended movie goers of Bad Eggs....Be forewarned. It's a movie with highly course language used in it. The "F" word was used so many times that you become almost immune to it. But it does make you squirm a bit,... not for the faint hearted.

There have been many movies made that are unintelligent spoofs of other movies. Luckily a large portion of these go straight to DVD these days, but every now and then one slips through the crack and I end up watching it. I'm always disappointed. They are littered with obvious jokes, and often look like they were ghost written by Fran Drescher. Even though I am a huge fan of Tony Martin, I was just a little sceptical that his movie wasn't just to be a cheap spoof of old Aussie cop movies. After ten minutes I knew I was onto a winner and that this movie was able to make me laugh without resorting to cheap "skit show" type humour. This movie didn't go great in the cinema, but hopefully someone gives Tony Martin a big pile of cash to make another movie. It would be a shame for Australian cinema if he didn't make another movie. Tony Martin may not be a cinematic visionary, but he knows movies and comedies, that's more than I can say for most directors. I enjoyed this movie, and it was great to not see jokes coming. Long live bad eggs.

Lately the quality of films coming out of Australia has been dreadful, but this movie has taken the Aussie Film industry to even lower depths.

What a poor film. The acting is dreadful on all accounts with most of the cast looking decidedly disinterested in the whole affair. Is the industry so short of talent that they now have to resort to actors who are totally unsuited for their parts? Mick Molloy as a copper just never washed one little bit for me. The production crew should hang their heads in shame. Most of the scenes have been way too overdone, milked for all they are worth and poorly edited. The grading is hopelessly uneven and in one scene there seems to be a sound sync problem. Then there are other technical sins. I mean really, I thought we were long past the days when boom mikes could be seen at the top of the screen. Every where you look there are the telltale signs of a rushed, poorly researched photoplay. One glaring unforgivable scene shows a van that is supposed to be holding 12 heavily armed men sitting high on it's springs and obviously unladen to even the most unobservant watcher. On the writing side, the swearing is way overdone even for the Australian Language. The previous reviewer states that the film is star studded and uses the "hit" word to describe the casts previous film "Crackerjack".

Crackerjack was a disaster, even in this country. So it's hardly an accolade. C'mon....Lawn Bowls. Oh yeah, they were queuing up out of the cinema doors for that one. Finally on the directing, well all I can say is "Roll over Stefan Elliot, you will soon be joined in that wilderness you have occupied since Woop Woop". Will someone please take a big cattle prod to the Aussie Film industry. It's been in a coma for far too long.

Just saw "Bad Eggs". It was a refreshing movie, (Compared to other Australian attempts at movie making) and the opening shots of the car "driven" by a dead person had the whole cinema laughing their guts out. You are watching wondering till almost the very end as to "who done it", some new actors, and some that that have probably been in every Aussie movie made...

Well worth watching, 7 out of 10 :)