Strange Planet (1999)

Admirable film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

An overseas commentator once said he would rather sit through a Lars Von Trier festival than watch an Australian comedy. Up until the recent "Any Questions for Ben?", and with the exception of "The Castle" and "Babe", I'd say he had a point. In fact, "Strange Planet" could be that Australian comedy he was talking about.Sadly, "Australian comedy" has been problematic (i.e. not funny) for decades. Although "Strange Planet" has pretensions to be a comment on the social mores of young, upper middle class Australians as opposed to a straight-out comedy, the filmmakers surely must have intended it to be funnier than it is.Set in Sydney, the movie is about three women who have been friends at university – Judy, Alice and Sally played by Claudia Karvin, Naomi Watts and Alice Garner – and three men who are starting their careers in the legal profession, Ewan, Joel and Neil played by Tom Long, Aaron Jeffery and Felix Williamson. The two groups do not know each other at the beginning of the film but their lives become enmeshed as the story unfolds. The story takes place over one year. So much is packed into this film that it is surprising that it seems to drag so much. Alarm bells sound early. As Judy and her friends leave a supermarket, Judy's boss, who is obsessed with her, asks her to marry him – on his knees no less. The scene is overplayed for comic potential but none is forthcoming; the whole sequence is contrived and miss-timed."Strange Planet" like many Australian films, comedies or otherwise, is too talky. When the script runs out of things for the characters to say, they read from magazines, books and astrology guides – anything to keep up the flow of verbiage. Much of the character motivation is revealed in sessions with psychoanalysts. Both Neil and Alice are seeing therapists – yet another way to keep the cast talking.The characters, men and women alike, constantly give each other advice. The script is full of pet theories espoused by one or other of the principals. Neil's character in particular has many theories, mostly about women. One of his theories is that one can tell what a woman is like from her handbag – this pertains somewhat to physical attributes and gives an idea of the level of wit in the movie.Everything is so superficial in this film that broken relationships, date rape, suicide attempts, sex scenes and self-discovery, all run together without generating much emotion. Although the underlying problem with "Strange Planet" is that it is a collection of poorly conceived sequences that don't hang together, it is the overall sense of self satisfaction that finally sinks the film for me. "Strange Planet", strange movie.

I thought it was a pretty good movie. The acting was good and the story was well told. It's one of those *feel good movies* that you know how it's going to turn out but you want to watch and see how it all ends anyway.

Like a few other Australian entries from 1999, 'Strange Planet' is gorgeously filmed but appallingly scripted and acted. The story sees two sets of three friends (three girls and three guys) who stumble to and from bad relationships. In a nutshell, that's basically the plot. Spanning a year, the film certainly covers a lot of time. And neatly too. Each new month is visually introduced by some stunning time-lapse sequences of Syndey. However, once plot and character development come into swing, then the movie just falls flat on its face. Dialogue feels too sparse and wanna-be offbeat, not to mention being so predictable and underdeveloped that it feels more like a synopsis than dialogue. The 'witty' nihilist-turned-romantic banter about relationships is anything but. The plot likewise feels all too familiar, and the ending comes paradoxically unsurprising and undeveloped, so undeveloped that the last shot (an overhead of the six eating breakfast) feels like an insulting attempt at gratifying the audience. Yet another sad triumph of of style over substance. Try 'The Big Night Out' for similar results.2/5

Rating - 4 stars (out of 5)Too many reviewers have tried to compare Emma-Kate Croghan's second feature with her first, Love and Other Catastrophes. Well you'd expect that, since they are relatively the same subject matter. I'm not though, because I have not seen it. But I will most definitely see it soon, because I was very impressed with "Strange Planet".It's not often that directors play it straight off the bat. Most try to pull off something amazing and fail miserably, others go for the 'play it dumb' method to make it accessible for everyone, as Steven (Hugo Weaving) so rightly puts it in the film. Croghan as a director oozes class; she knows what she is doing. In other hands it could have been very messy.The tagline is perhaps the best summary of the film one could put it. Three girls, three guys, 365 days to get it together. We follow the trials and tribulations of the two separate groups, who encounter the usual mid-twenties "What am I going to do with life?" crisis, fall in and out of love, rave parties etc etc. All told with amusing results. Though the material is far from original, I never felt as if I needed to scream out "I've seen it ALL before!!!". Croghan adds in her own dose of tricks along the way to make sure it definitely sets it apart from other films, for example watch out for the ongoing discussion of a lady's handbag!Claudia Karvan wonderfully plays Judy who begins the film with so much assurance but begins to lose herself as her world starts falling apart. Naomi Watts (Alice) is great too and easy to watch. In fact all the actors gave first class performances. There is so much to like about the film, that the ending comes as a bit of a let down. It's the ending you want for the characters, but not exactly the right ending for you. A little too sentimental and over-done and way too predictable.Australian films have come a long way since Gallipoli, Strictly Ballroom and even the recent Shine. No longer are we compelled to just one or two great films a year. We are producing them like never before. Strange Planet sits with the best of them this year - Two Hands and Siam Sunset. With Croghan, Karvan and Watts we have many good things to look forward to.