By Erin Free
Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Andrew Leavold, Kristen Condon, Samuel K. Nkansah, Joseph Osei
Intro:
...a major missed opportunity.
With his exceptional docos The Search For Weng Weng (2007) and Pub: The Movie (2022), Aussie filmmaker and trash cinema afficionado Andrew Leavold proved himself a potential master of the form, finding the poetry in “low art”, and crafting two utterly mesmerising personal portraits in the process. Now, clearly with warped visions of Les Blank’s Burden Of Dreams and Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie roaring through his head, Andrew Leavold makes himself the star of a fevered, wholly whacked-out mockumentary about the making of a low-budget action extravaganza in Ghana. The resultant film is The Taller They Come…and it’s not great.
Leavold is Alby Wrangler, a loud, brash, and horribly irritating Australian independent filmmaker who heads to Ghana to team up with the real-life Samuel K. Nkansah, aka Ninja-Man, an ingenious, highly industrious, and pioneering Ghanaian writer, producer and director famed in his homeland for his inventive low-budget action flicks. The film that the duo end up making is The Taller They Come, a kung fu rethink on Perry Henzell’s 1972 Jimmy Cliff-starring cult classic The Harder They Come. Oh, and it stars a little person in the lead role, and features a space ship. If this cinematic slice of nutbaggery was the whole show, it would be a crazy and enjoyable one. But, holy shit, the framing mockumentary…
At times near-intolerable, The Taller They Come is a major missed opportunity. Everything good in the film (and there’s actually plenty of good stuff) emanates from the wonderful Samuel K. Nkansah, not just a fascinating filmmaking figure, but also a great guy; if this was more a film in line with The Search For Weng Weng and Pub: The Movie, it could have been another great personal portrait. Instead, it’s largely puerile and insufferable.
Though obviously intentionally, the blustery buffoon Alby Wrangler is an utterly charmless fuckwit, and he does not make for an engaging protagonist in any way, shape or form. And when his shit-show of a girlfriend (Kristen Condon certainly deserves praise for her body-and-spirit commitment to the role) shows up in Ghana, the whole deal gets even more grating and mind-numbing.
Andrew Leavold is many things, most of them very, very, very good: director, producer, writer, commentator, film fest curator, and passionate and unparalleled champion of indie and exploitation cinema. What Andrew Leavold isn’t, however, is an actor. A master comedian or top-notch actor (say, Justin Rosniak, Damon Herriman or Daniel Henshall) may have had a chance at making Alby Wrangler interesting, but a wholly unrestrained Leavold (it’s hard to imagine proceedings getting any worse, and then he starts impersonating Ray Winstone) just isn’t up to the task. Sure, he looks like he’s having an absolute fucking ball, but Andrew Leavold’s laughs and guffaws very quickly become the audience’s screams of agony.
The Taller They Come screens at The Sydney Underground Film Festival on Sunday September 13. Click here for all ticketing venue information.
