Griff the Invisible (2011)

Waste of time

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Griff (Ryan Kwanten) is a doormat at his place of employment. One co-worker in particular bullies him and piles a great deal of his work onto Griff. But, at night, Griff gets some revenge. This affable but quiet young adult man dresses up in a homemade superhero costume and chases the bad guys away from his immediate neighborhood. Very clever, Griff has hooked up a viewing system to see crimes outside his building and, when needed, he swoops in. You'd have to think that the perps are surprised at his actions but they usually stop and run. Of course, this does not really sit well with the local police force. In fact, they hang posters up looking for the loner hero. Even Griff's handsome brother Tim comes to live in the same town, to keep an eye on his odd sibling. One day, Tim happens to meet a lovely lady, Melody (Maeve Dermody) and, after one date, he tells Griff that she is THE ONE. Yet, Maeve is not certain, being a bit unusual herself and still living at home. Lo and behold, when Tim brings Melody to Griff's apartment for a how-do-you-do, Melody almost instantly prefers Griff, making for big problems ahead. Never having head a real romance, will Griff respond to Melody's charms, and, hurt his own brother? Will G give up his superhero acts? This is quite an unusual film from Australia but rather enjoyable for those who like things a bit different. The viewer doesn't truly understand how, even with a costume, Griff stops crime or that when he claims to be invisible, he is still in plain sight. Yet, it doesn't matter. No one in the States will recognize the actors at this point but they are all fine. Sets, costumes, a winning script and an amusing direction make this a fun little indie. If you can see from this description that it might suit you, go get Griff.

Griff The Invisible is a lovely story about Griff (Ryan Kwanten – True Blood) and Melody (Maeve Dermody – Beautiful Kate) who live in their own solitary worlds. They come together when they discover they are a like with their passion for the impossible.Griff is a quiet character who gets teased at his office day job. When the sun goes down, he becomes a hero by saving people from random attacks in the night. He goes on a mission to create an invisibility cloak and succeeds. Who would have thought you could make this possible with two simple ingredients. But I'm not going to tell you, you'll have to wait until you see the movie.Melody is a loner and an experimental scientist. She's into physics and tries her hardest to walk through walls as she figures out that there is all this space between matter, so it must be possible. I actually got goose bumps when her hand imprinted in the wall when she first succeeds, hair raising stuff.This is a true Australian style film with lots of humour and great Aussie actors; Patrick Brammall, Toby Schmitz, Marshall Napier and Heather Mitchell.I felt so many different emotions, some I'm not familiar with. I think because they touched a nerve with me i.e. physics and different dimensions, it got me thinking, as I often wonder about this stuff. It was a truly beautiful moment when they realised their uniqueness made them the same. They could relate to each other and communicate on the same level. It is just like in reality, when you meet someone amazing when you least expect it and you both get each other, it's magical.

Sigh... Here we go again.I only recently reviewed "Super", exposing it for what it was: a cheap exploitation. "Griff the Invisible" is just as much so as "Super". Read my review on "Super", all the points I made against it are valid in this case as well. These movies do not have to be about "the darker side" of being a superhero. In case of Griff, he's not even a hero, he's an antihero in the correct sense of a word. Dictionary definition states the following: antihero is a central character of a work of fiction who lacks the traditional heroic virtues.All the usual shenanigans are there in the case of Griff: a very unsympathetic protagonist, a lack of motivation, a lack of a defined antagonist (bad for a superhero movie, "Super" had a good one though) and a very strong female lead.The movie is essentially about an adult that's unable to grow up, living in a fantasy world and a girl that comes to his aid. Very similar to "Defendor", except that particular movie wasn't bad at all (also the protagonist had a mental developmental disability).The movie is also full of pseudo-scientific nonsense to make it seem more intellectual, where's it comes out as silly to anyone with even an elementary knowledge of the discussed (pseudo-)scientific topics. I shall give one example of this. One of the main characters pounders a "theoretical" possibility of one physical object being able to move straight through another, due to the fact that most space between the molecules and atoms that an object is comprised of is empty. That fact is true: we are mostly empty space if we're talking about matter only. But those atoms and molecules also have bonds between them to form an object, unless it is a gas where those bonds are very weak. These bonds keep us together, were they to break we would fall apart. These bonds are energetic in nature, they would be disrupted if another bond were to be introduced in the same space. To penetrate solid matter an object has to reach a superfluid state, a highly homogeneous state of matter, but even then it is not really penetrating anything, but rather seeping through tiny empty cracks, benefiting from a complete lack of friction. It goes without saying that one would never survive such a transformation.Oh, yes, there's also a lot of metaphysical garbage as well and as some of us may know: metaphysics is useless because it can be used to explain everything, since it itself is built out of the unknowable.The only two good things I have to say about Griff are as follows. Maeve Dermody who plays Melody does so very neatly. She brings a lot of life into this barren wasteland of a film. She's also a great actress, I hope to see her in a movie that is actually good. Also the soundtrack is very nice indeed.The ending is interesting, but I had seen it done before, so nothing special there.Nothing else to say about it really. As a struggling superhero sub-genre goes this one is nothing to write home about. I suggest you skip it. Two points to Maeve and a half to the soundtrack, rounding it down, just because I feel like it.

I had my reservations about this movie, being more than a little wary about any super-hero movie made this year. All my predictions about this movie came true. The plot seemed silly, the script made me cringe, and the acting could have been better. Or so I thought. It turns out that one of the lead characters, the brother, expressed the same sentiments throughout the movie, and that's when I realized I had misunderstood the movie. It was deliberate.The movie "Super" was similar in that respect, and if not for my policy of watching a movie till the end no matter what, I would have walked out in the middle both times. Super was a non-mainstream movie, that broke all the rules of action movies, and at times seemed to more a poor parody of the genre. The ending redeemed it though; I loved it.Here too, the ending redefined what this movie set out to be. Not a super-hero movie, not action, definitely not comedy, and not quite romance. But for all those people complaining that Hollywood has nothing new to offer, I strongly urge you to check this one out