Bran Nue Dae (2011)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Purely Joyful Movie!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Bran Nue Dae experience is nothing but hunky-dory and It indeed presents a memorable experience. The delivery is pleasant, tight and often hilarious with a toe-tapping soundtrack. A story of self-discovery and exploration yet, it clearly hints the importance of freedom and human experiences. While being salubrious with spontaneous dance-acts, it also delivers some clever Broadway or Fred Astaire style footwork and fancy vocals. The nut-shelled coming of age story of fifteen-year old Willie also interjects a message about the hardships of Australian Aboriginal lives, their involvement with religious beliefs as well as their social problems as alcoholism and poverty. However, the success of Bran Nue Dae lies in the fact that it can be viewed both as a pleasant story of love, dance and music as well as a sociological journey into Australia, her history and the elements of her society. Either way, the audience is bound to love the light-hearted pace of this 85 minute production.Bran Nue Dae was screened at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, with kind courtesy of the Australian High Commission on 12th June 2012.~ Sean Amos

Greetings again from the darkness. Gosh! Enough already! How many Aboriginal musicals featuring a VW hippie van being pursued by a priest must we endure? OK, so maybe the premise isn't all that common. Based on an extremely popular Australian play from the 1990's, director Rachel Perkins screen adaptations features the deserts of NW Australia and a loony priest played by Geoffrey Rush.Though the idea is pretty creative, the film execution comes up lacking a bit. None of the songs are very catchy and the overall talent in the film is mediocre at best. Newcomer Rocky McKenzie in the lead role of Willie is pretty nondescript. Willie is forced to attend a school led by Geoffrey Rush in order to train for a life in the priesthood. Of course, Willie is a teenager and all he really wants is a life with Rosie ... they make flutter-eyes at each other. Sadly, Rosie falls under the spell of a honky tonk musician as Willie heads out to study God.Jessica Mauboy plays Rosie and has the musical highlight of the film as she belts out "Stand By Your Man". The downside is that the lip-syncing is so poor that I found it quite distracting. As expected, when Willie rebels and runs away from the cloth and towards Rosie, the fun begins. He hooks up with Uncle Tadpole (an energetic Ernie Dingo) and a couple of traveling hippies. One of the hippies is played by recording artist Missy Higgins. They are unknowingly being chased by the priest as they try to get Willie back to Broome (and Rosie!).Along the way they stumble upon a shop run by the great Magda Szubanski, who was so memorable as Mrs. Hoggett in "Babe". That's just one of the challenges they face along the dirt road. For the sake of comedy, there should have been even more.The film has bits of Bollywood, "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Grease", but the parts just don't add up to a full musical comedy. The colors and setting are spectacular and the words to the songs often reinforce the plight of the Aborigine people, but everything just falls a bit short of the target. Even the climactic scene where all the pieces of the puzzle come raining down doesn't compare to the similar type scene in "City Island". It's a sweet, simple enough film with just not enough to offer.

I rarely feel the need to walk out of a cinema mid film, or embarrassed that someone might recognise me viewing this film. It wuold seem Bran Nue Dae breaks all sorts of barriers.I had high hopes that this would be a cleverly shot quirky comedy. What I got was a poorly shot, poorly scripted and poorly acted adaptation of a musical which should never have been made. Honestly some of the worst acting I've seen come out of this country in a long time (I'm looking your way Missy Higgins). There were some moments which I really enjoyed - Ernie Dingos performance was fantastic as was Dan Sultans. Both of these actors really added some depth to a very shallow film.You'll feel awkward watching some characters, and even more awkward when they burst into song with poorly lip-synced numbers that seem to come out of nowhere. This is a fine example of how not to adapt a musical to the screen there's no lead up, no emotional evocation, just BAMN and you're assaulted with singing that's both irrelevant and uninspiring.This film screams wasted potential, it could have been so much better. It really is the little details that spoiled this film. I regret sitting through the whole film. I should have walked out at the 30 minute mark but I stayed, hoping for some level of improvement.

Today I went and saw "Bran Nue Day," I have seen the trailer a few times before its release and I've got to say it looked really good and I could tell it was going to be a very good movie, My friends had a few doubts due to the fact Jess Mauboy and Missy Higgns have never acted before. But now actually seeing the movie i found that not a problem at all, I think the person who played Willie was a brilliant actor (Not sure of the actors name) and I think Erine Dingo was the highlight of the cast playing Uncle Tadpole. Myself and the rest of the cinema found ourselves laughing a lot and I couldn't help keeping a big stupid grin on my face, The music was just fantastic and if i had know the lyrics i would've sung along, but instead i just tapped my foot, It was the best movie i have seen in a long time, A feel good, Aussie, Musical, Comedy, Adventure movie. I recommend it to anyone, any age, from anywhere, The only down side is that Jess Mauboy was a tiny bit cheesy and was a bit of a let down compared to everyone else but did a very good job for her first time acting. Props to Missy Higgns for making me love the film even more, Her sining and acting, just superb.