indi

Well I have had a wonderful week of movie watching. Here is my latest offering for your perusal. Enjoy!

Boytown

Directed by Kevin Carlin
Starring Glen Robbins, Mick Molloy, Bob Franklin, Wayne Hope, Gary Eck and Sally Phillips
New release DVD

Boytown is a satire of the music industry and the transient nature of fame and it’s trappings. It is a comical look at what happens when a boy band grows up.
Boytown the band, an eighties sensation, was the first and best of the “boy groups” whose meteoric rise came to an abrupt end when Benny G (Robbins) left the band to go solo. Now 15 years later, middle aged and disillusioned, Benny rounds up the band members, all of whom are hopelessly lost in suburban mediocrity, and convinces them to “put the band back together”.
Now, I realise that Boytown is a parody and as such not meant to be taken too seriously, but did it really have to be so terrible?
Well let’s see, as a concept Boytown is not too bad. Although we have seen the idea before, using a boy band as the subject is a fresh angle. They use all the obligatory rock cliches; the girl who comes between the two leaders of the band, the enigmatic video, sexual ambiguity, plane crashes, screaming fans, it’s all there. Yet instead of going “Platinum” Boytown would be lucky to go “Pewter”.
I can say one positive thing about this film, it is consistent. Consistently awful from start to finish. From the unconvincing flashbacks of the band in their heyday to the baffling and badly sung final sequence, Boytown fails to deliver, fails to deliver, FAILS TO DELIVER!
Up until now I have been a big fan of Glen Robbins. From “Uncle Arthur” to “Kath And Kim” his goofy, self-deprecating humour has been easy to watch, sympathetic and on the odd occasion very, very funny. No one, however would class him as a good actor much less a good singer. This is perhaps one of the major failings of this film. Not one of the cast has a decent voice. This would not be a big problem if it were just one or two songs, but this movie relies heavily on singing and song content for it’s laughs.
One gets the feeling when watching Boytown, of a bunch of school boys giggling over their own jokes. There is an all pervading air of “that’ll do” about each scene which is reminiscent of “The Comedy Company” and other sketch shows of that calibre. The characters are so under-developed that perhaps Mick Molloy should have considered a second or third draft of his script before production went ahead. The amazing comeback of the band is completely unbelievable and the suggestion that 30+ women with children would be sent wild with desire over songs about PMT, laundry and picking up the kids from school is ever so slightly offensive. It also astonished me, that having plagiarized one of the most brilliant moments of another film, they still failed to be funny.
We hear so much about the dire state of the Australian Film Industry, so it saddens me greatly that year after year television and radio comedians receive funding to produce such badly written, badly executed, self indulgent crap.
If you are looking for a brilliant and biting satire about aging rock legends and the music industry I recommend you hire “This Is Spinal Tap”.
If you would prefer to watch Glen Robbins, Mick Molloy and their mates indulging themselves with excruciatingly bad material, then this is the film for you. I give it 2 1/2 out of 10.