by Erin Free
Worth: $18.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Martin Plaza, Peter O'Doherty, Reg Mombassa, David "Bird" Twohill, Greedy Smith
Intro:
...a perfectly forged portrait of one of Australia’s mightiest musical outfits.
Mental As Anything were one of the truly great Australian bands, never mentioned in the same breath as titans like Cold Chisel or INXS, but with a longevity and creative output to rival even those giants. The bright, fast-paced and deeply sensitive doco, Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story, pays them just and deserving tribute in warm, witty style.
Though described in the doco by their road manager as “the most ambition-less band he’d ever met”, Mental As Anything boasted nothing short of an embarrassment of riches when it came to creativity. The band featured not just four songwriters of equally prodigious gifts, but also a collection of wildly diverse but tight-binding personalities that combined to create one fascinating whole. Singer guitarist Martin Plaza is cool and laconic; brothers bassist Peter O’Doherty and guitarist Reg Mombassa are spiky, bone-dry and absurdly funny; drummer David “Bird” Twohill is coolly down to earth; and late singer and keyboardist Andrew “Greedy” Smith was a warm and wonderful born entertainer.
Mental As Anything’s songs, meanwhile, have stood the test of time since their releases through the 1980s and 1990s, winningly blending art rock, pop smarts and punk energy. And on top of that, the band also created two of the greatest Australian drinking songs of all time in the wholly ingenious “Too Many Times” and “The Nips Are Getting Better.”
With the likes of Descent Into The Maelstrom: The Untold Story Of Radio Birdman, The Most Australian Band Ever! and Harder And Harder (both about The Hard Ons), Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, and Paul Kelly: Stories Of Me, Aussie music fans have been very, very well-served in terms of music docos over the past few years, and Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story is another worthy addition to this growing and increasingly impressive pantheon.
Director Matthew Walker crafted a real gem with his 2021 doco I’m Wanita, and he applies the same strong storytelling sense and gift for gentle but probing enquiry with Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story. Using the band’s famously colourful, cartoonish album and poster artwork as inspiration, Walker gives Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story a real sense of style and exuberance, while telling the tale of Mental As Anything through interviews with all band members (save the sadly missed Greedy Smith, whose brother is along to tell his side of the story), along with partners, managers, producers and various friends, peers and fans, including Neil Finn, Colin Hay and Jane Gazzo.
There is plentiful archival footage, and great stories about the band’s rise, fall, and multiple subsequent rises, while the nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s is wonderfully ripe, with ample glimpses of a Sydney – and Sydney music scene – now largely gone. Those that grew up with Countdown will undoubtedly be flooded with emotion at many points during the doco, especially when it deals with the widening fissures that eventually spelled the end of the band proper, with Greedy Smith the only original member still playing under its banner by the end. The passing of this larger-than-life Aussie pop culture icon (along with Martin Plaza’s health issues), meanwhile, give Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story a real sadness and pathos that offset its vibrancy and ultimately make it something truly special. Live It Up: The Mental As Anything Story is a perfectly forged portrait of one of Australia’s mightiest musical outfits.
