Review of Backyard Ashes (2013) by Grant S — 03 Nov 2014

Embarrassing.

Between making great crime-dramas (eg Animal Kingdom, Snowtown), Australia makes some horrendously bad movies. Pretentious dramas (eg Jindabyne), low-brow comedies (eg the Wogboy) and its cousin, the intended-to-be-folksy-but-really-quite-stupid comedy. This is one of the latter.

Watched this because it involved cricket, and almost immediately regretted it. It has some good moments - some cricket in-jokes (eg the Muralitharan = chucker observation and bowling a beer underarm to a New Zealander) and some other laugh-out-loud moments - but these are few and far between. This is seriously bad.

Every stereotype is employed, every cliche abused in this farce. The writers and director could not have made the characters more of caricatures of Australians and English if they tried. The plot, for lack of a better word, is silly and contrived. It's as if they wanted to be as predictable and unoriginal as possible.

Embarrassing to watch, especially if you're Australian. A movie made to appeal to the lowest common denominator.