Bright Aussie teen film with plenty of energy, engaging cast and good ideas. It doesn't quite work. The problem is easily identified... in my opinion anyhow... and it was something not picked up on my any of the critics that I read. All the central situations have potential but they aren't developed.
Craig Horner is besties with Veronica Sywak and Kristen Schmid and they hook up. Great scenario - when three becomes a crowd. Horner is very good. But that happens at the end, after we've just hung out with them, when it needed to happen earlier, and we play out the real drama i..e Horner finding life without his best friends.
Tony Brockman wanting to break up with Jess Gower because it's schoolies. That's great. But then Brockman just sits on a seat and gets wasted with a girl and... nothing much happens. Gower grabs Jamie Croft to root him and... she doesn't. No story progression. You could've spun it any sort of way. Had a romance. A fight. Just some relationship progression. But instead they jump up and down on the spot.
Mark Priestley and Travis Cotton as two yokels going to schoolies - great. But they just yokel around, run into Damien Garvey, do more yokeling. Then they meet the two private school girls and it looks like they might get off on them... and you go "that's the story. Those four having a romance." But they dismiss it in one scene.
Nathalie Roy as a posh girl meeting some raucus boys, but one seems nice... That has promise. Girl letting to let hair down. But we find out straight away the boy is a lout. No progression.
The film is good in its serious moments - Horner realising his two friends want to root, Horner making friends with Roy at the beach, Gower and Croft saying goodbye.
A lot of the comedy is uncomfortable. I don't mean to sound old but two girls getting wasted and driving a limo erratically on the road... that's frigging dangerous. The scenes where Nathalie Roy is surrounded by boozy aggro boys is realistic in a really unfun way.
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