Last Night at the Movies

 
Australian director PJ Hogan hopes his new comedy, Mental, will strike a similar chord with local audiences as his first hit, Muriel’s Wedding.
There’s nothing un-Australian about PJ Hogan’s latest film – and that’s the way the veteran director likes it.
His latest comedy, Mental, is set in rural Queensland and the characters’ accents are cringe-worthy. But Hogan says the film is a conscious effort to tap back into the Australian vernacular, which was a feature of his breakthrough hit Muriel’s Wedding.
That 1994 Aussie comedy propelled Hogan into a successful career in the US, including box office gold with the romcom My Best Friend’s Wedding, starring Julia Roberts.
Walking the red carpet at the film’s premiere on Saturday, on the last night of the Melbourne International Film Festival, Hogan welcomed the suggestion his latest effort might be too Australian to find favour with a broader audience.
"I made it totally for Australians," he said.
"I’ve worked a very long time in the US and I felt I was losing my voice.
"I really do believe that as Australian filmmakers we have to stop looking to overseas to approve of us.
"I think our films are pretty great. So do they – because they keep pinching our actors, our directors and our cinematographers."
The film tracks a family in crisis when a busy politician father ships his stressed-out wife to a mental hospital.
Unable to cope with his five girls alone, he picks up a hitchhiker to be their nanny.
Hogan admits the film is part autobiographical, with several characters based on his family and friends.
"These are people that I knew very well and I loved or was driven mad by," he said.
Mental stars Toni Collette as the nanny, with Anthony LaPaglia and Rebecca Gibney.
Gibney, who plays the overweight, over-worked mother coming apart at the seams, rates the role was the most challenging of her career.
"I’ve never been stretched so much as an actor and I’ve never had such an incredibly thrilling experience on a film set," she said.
"It’s The Sound Of Music on acid."
She said Mental was "unashamedly Australian".
"There’s been some criticism – is it too Australian? Well, not for Australian audiences," she said.
"I think Australians are going to love it because it seriously is a very Australian film, but it’s also got great heart."
 
Another synopsis
 
 

Shirley Moochmore (Rebecca Gibney) is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, obsessively singing songs from The Sound of Music. Daughter Michelle (Malorie O’Neill) is hearing scary voices and the other four girls are rushing to diagnose themselves as sociopaths and schizophrenics – no wonder their philandering-politician dad (Anthony LaPaglia) is avoiding coming home at night. Enter Shaz (Toni Collette), a bong-smoking, knife-carrying hitchhiker, clearly a little bit unhinged herself, ready to whip their household into shape like a rough-as-guts Julie Andrews.

PJ Hogan’s risk-taking return to the hypercolour universe of Muriel’s Wedding (1994) has more nutjobs than a John Irving novel. There’s a disapproving neighbour who scrubs her driveway with a toothbrush (Kerry Fox); an auntie who collects creepy life-sized dolls (Caroline Goodall); and a Steve Irwinesque shark hunter who owns a museum dedicated to the Great Whitethat ate Harold Holt (Liev Schreiber with a startlingly perfect Ocker accent). Mental’s manic episodes beggar belief but Hogan claims that most of it is true and happened to him growing up on the Gold Coast.
 
Just as Muriel over-exploited the Andersson-Ulvaeus catalogue for emotional cartharsis, Mental leans too heavily on Rodgers and Hammerstein. But there’s authenticity and a lack of condescension in its approach to mental illness and the shockwaves it sends out within a family and a community. The laughs here aren’t cheap or safe; bodily outrages occur that will delight local audiences and ensure the film doesn’t resonate in the US in the same way as Hogan’s debut. Newcomer Lily Sullivan impresses as eldest daughter Coral, who mistakes the bugbears of adolescence – awkwardness, bullies – for the family madness, while Collette is a wiry, foul-mouthed force of nature, proclaiming and personifying the maxim that insanity is always subjective. There are unusual rewards for viewers willing to climb ev’ry mountain with this deranged guide.

 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnQPnXbj-RY
 
Mental
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7Gl7VPp-kQ
 
Muriels wedding
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKou17sVZOw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiE9J0nlK_M&feature=related
 
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