Idiot Box (1997)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Admirable film.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The first comment I must make about this film is that the characters are so Australian. This is not surprising considering that it is an Australian Film, but the thing is is that the characters are genuine. It is as if the makers followed some around and took down all of their mannerisms and speech patterns. I was seriously convinced that Mick and Kev were genuine.This movie was a comedy, and I really did not find it that funny. The funniest scene was when they were being chased down the street by a guy in a koala suit after stealing his money bucket. Other than that, there was not much that I found really funny about the movie. Yet as an Australian film, I think that it continues to set the standard. We don't go for fancy effects, but rather real characters, and the characters in Idiot Box are real.The movie is based around two unemployed bums, Mick and Kev. They think they know everything, but really don't. Mick fancies himself a poet and Kev fancies himself important. Mick at least has a go at being a poet, Kev is simply a looser, and very much like some Australians that I know. He is an idiot that thinks that he can think when he really cannot. He is the one that gets everybody around him into trouble, and then blames them for stuffing up. He can never do any wrong, yet he himself just can't stay out of trouble.Mick and Kev want to rob a bank. They think they can do it, but as the film progresses they seriously do not know what they are getting into. The police aren't onto them, but rather trying to stop a group that has been successfully robbing a lot of banks. Kev and Mick just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.What I liked about this was that I could not predict the ending. I knew that they could not pull off the robbery because they simply do not know what they are doing. In fact they seem to make more enemies than friends. Their self centred attitudes, especially Kev's, seems to alienate them. Kev is the leader of the two, and the cover shows that because Kev is running ahead of Mick with a serious look on his face, while Mick is laughing.Idiot Box also gives us an idea of what it is like on the dole, but they are not seriously looking for a job, rather they just bludge around home and the pub. Mick and Kev are dole bludgers and as such we do not feel any sympathy for them. If anybody, we feel more sympathy for Mick because he actually seems like a nice guy. Kev is simply just shallow because he refuses to let his emotions out. When Mick meets up with a young lady, we begin to see another side of him, a side that is sensitive and loving, and we feel that he is being dragged into something by Kev.What is also interesting is that they are not made heroes at the end of the movie, and as such I feel that this raises the movie about the typical Hollywood garbage. The characters in this movie are in way over their heads, and are so fortunate that they are given a second chance.

A rip-snortingly good seriocomic Australian crime caper romp about Kev and Mick, who are a couple of slothful, shiftless, luckless, jobless, penniless, hopelessly dumb and perpetually beer-blasted couch potato twentysomething slacker meatheads who are constantly hard up for booze money. The dim-witted duo decide to reverse their misfortune by robbing a bank. Naturally, things don't go as planned, with a rival gang of clown-masked stick-up boys who've been holding up banks all over the city gumming up the works. This delightfully offbeat feature scores a 100% smack dab on the money bull's eye thanks to its engagingly off-kilter sense of raucously wiggy humor, keenly observant feel for and genuine sympathy towards miserably impoverished, just barely scraping by bottom-of-the-socioeconomic-ladder lower-class people, uniformly bang-up acting, fluid photography, and commendably unpredictable loosey-goosey narrative structure. Writer/director David Caesar tells the whole manic story with dynamic, barn-storming panache and punchy, pacy, rat-a-tat-tat bravura style to burn, adroitly pulling off a difficult balancing act of laugh-out-loud uproarious comedy and quietly affecting low-key drama (a subplot concerning the leader of the rival gang needing the stolen loot to support his junkie wife's drug habit proves to be especially poignant). The robbery itself is a marvelously tense and thrilling tour-de-force set piece. Best of all, Ben Mendelsohn as the hostile, dangerously temperamental Kev and Jeremy Simms as Kev's more laid-back, long-suffering bud Mick display a wonderfully edgy and oftentimes downright electric chemistry. While the main characters are unarguable losers, the film overall is a total winner.

I recently described Idiot Box to somebody as an Australian "Twin Town". They asked "what's Twin Town?". I replied "a Welsh Trainspotting".What could have been a run of the mill movie about two likeable hoons on the wrong side of the law ( but you root for them anyway ), was saved by some great flashes of direction and an exceptional performance by Ben Mendelsohn as Kev. it is a tribute to his characterization, that no matter how many times I see this film, I find the ending as shocking and as moving as the first time I saw it.Kev's motto is great "maximum fear, minimum time", but not one I profess to live by.Good music too.

A grim, gritty and uncompromising look at slacker life in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. A similar mind set to FIGHT CLUB, THE GRADUATE, SUBURBIA and even A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - young men with no future, with nothing to do but spew hate at the establishment around them. An underrated, under appreciated and highly engrossing film. Watch this film and you'll feel like swigging a case of VB and smashing the empties against a brick wall.