By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Working Dog’s beloved Aussie comedy classic The Castle starring Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Sophie Lee and Eric Bana.
Where else in the world do filmmakers revel in portraying themselves and their countrymen as foolish simpletons? Take a look at some of the most well-loved Aussie films of all time: Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom, Chopper, Wake In Fright, The Adventures Of Barry McKenzie…the list goes on. All of them take great pleasure in showing the very worst of Aussie life. It’s no wonder that the rest of the world sees us as mullet-sporting, crocodile wrestling thickheads! We bring it on ourselves!
The worst offender of all these Aussie “classics” is 1997’s The Castle, starring Michael Caton as hapless loser Darryl Kerrigan, who fights to keep his family home in the face of government authorities determined to bulldoze the house to make way for an airport expansion. The first thing that anybody would notice about the film is that the home really isn’t worth saving, so the whole theme is based around the stupidity of our loveable main character. Har de har har!
Of course, critics and fans of the film alike would put it down to the “good old Aussie self-deprecating sense of humour.” I disagree. I put it down to two other factors: the Aussie film industry’s satisfaction at merely appealing to the lowest common denominator, and the damage done to Australia’s global image by Paul Hogan’s movie career.
Aussie icon Hoges led the way, and we were all too eager to follow. After all, nobody had heard of Australia before Crocodile Dundee, right? Right? For all our international readers, please know that Australia has more to offer than big knives, dirty outback pubs, and uneducated fools.
Yes, The Castle does have a few laughs (although it relies heavily on lazy catchphrase comedy at times), and as a stand-alone piece it certainly isn’t the worst film to ever grace this column. But in the grand scheme of things, The Castle did more than any other film to perpetuate the myth that all Aussies are stupid, and for that alone it deserves to be taken out of circulation.
Thankfully, the local film industry now quite often produces genuinely thought provoking and culturally accurate films, but The Butcher fears that the damage has already been irrevocably done; trying to get the world to take us seriously could be an uphill task. Of course, it doesn’t help that one of our last legitimate, purely Australian smash hits was Kenny. Sigh.
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his angry missives against Amelie, The Social Network, Argo, Gravity, A Clockwork Orange, Scarface, The Artist, Only God Forgives, One Battle After Another, Birdman, Lethal Weapon, Blazing Saddles, Strictly Ballroom, Donnie Darko, Psycho, 12 Years A Slave, Red Dog, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Breathless, Elizabeth, Miracle On 34th Street, The Full Monty, There Will Be Blood, Les Miserables, The King’s Speech, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Magnificent Seven, Gone With The Wind, The Right Stuff, 81/2, Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, Jaws, Black Swan, Gladiator, Chopper, I’m Not There, Interstellar, Marvel Studios and Citizen Kane.
