Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Alan Dukes, Airlie Dodds, Susan Prior, Rhys Muldoon, Rose Riley, Steve Le Marquand
Intro:
“Book Week is a little gem of a film.”
The crumpled, under-achieving, slightly lecherous but still somehow charming literary professor/teacher type is a familiar trope when it comes to American films, but is far less prevalent here in Australia. Book Week – the new film from writer/producer/director, Heath Davis, who announced himself as a major talent to watch with his striking 2016 debut, Broke – shoots to redress the balance, and in the figure of misanthropic author turned high school teacher, Nick Cutler (superbly played by regular film and TV supporting player, Alan Dukes), we get a wonderfully lived-in character to rival Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys or Joaquin Phoenix in Irrational Man. Cutler is irresponsible, immature, self-centred, mean-spirited and pretentious…in short, he’s not the kind of guy that you’d like to actually hang out with, but he makes for an utterly compelling screen creation.
Vaguely famous for a book that he wrote eight years ago (and equally infamous for the mess of boozy bad behaviour that accompanied its publication), Cutler is now toiling away unhappily at Little Fields High School, dealing with disinterested students and a world that feels like it’s passing him by. But when a hip publishing company (hilariously embodied by Toby Schmitz and Khan Chittenden) looks set to pick up his latest novel, Cutler’s life starts to look up. Self-sabotage, however, is his business, and a pair of ill-judged romantic entanglements (with Susan Prior and Airlie Dodds, both excellent), along with his own bad attitude, soon threatens Nick Cutler’s imminent success.
Wittily scripted, sharply characterised, and smartly performed (Rose Riley, Pippa Grandison, Steve Le Marquand, Rhys Muldoon, Tiriel Mora, Maya Stange, Nicholas Hope and Jolene Anderson all do great work in small roles), Book Week is a little gem of a film. It not only celebrates the joy of reading (and learning), but also the ability of people to change for the better. You always get the feeling that there’s a better man beneath Nick Cutler’s sour exterior, and Alan Dukes ingeniously reveals his character’s true self slowly and authentically as the film unspools. It’s a lovely portrait piece, and Book Week is nothing short of a cinematic page-turner.
A wonderful review… looking forward to seeing it.
I’m afraid you will need endurance and persistence to discover merit in this movie. The director made a telling comment in his introduction, in describing his movie as a comedy, and encouraging the Perth preview audience to enjoy it, that the Sydney audience didn’t laugh.
A boring main character makes for a tedious boring movie, and comedy is difficult, it requires lightness and subtlety of touch and timing, as well as a good script, and these aspects are missing.
It failed to engage us, and we left before the end, but we were the only ones that did, so maybe we both missed something?
Absolutely agree with John Ellis here. The main character had no redeeming characteristics as far as I could see – I just perceived him as a self-obsessed, misogynistic boor who made excuses for himself (not beyond redemption, but there needed to be a massive acknowledgement of past indiscretions for any believable change to happen, something that did NOT happen by the end of this movie, despite the writers wanting you to believe it).