Introducing the Dwights
Director: Cherie Nowlan. Screenplay: Keith Thompson. Cinematography: Mark Wareham. Film editing: Scott Gray. Production design: Neil Hanson. Music: Martin Armiger. Producer: Rosemary Blight. With: Brenda Blethyn, Khan Chittenden, Emma Booth, Richard Wilson, Katie Wall, Frankie J. Holden, Rebecca Gibney, Russell Dykstra, Philip Quast, Tracie Sammut, Justin Martin, David Webb , Susan Kennedy, Paul Barry, Brendan Clearkin. Australia. 105 min. Original title: Clubland. 2007.
Blethyn’s no-holds-barred performance is the best asset of this standard-issue dramedy about a middle-aged woman named Jean who gave up her iffy “career” as a standup comic to raise two sons, one of whom has mild brain damage, and now hopes to regain the spotlight despite all the laws of probability. Subplots center on the relationships between Jean and her sons; between son Tim and Jill, his sympathetic girlfriend; between Tim and Mark, his brother; and between everyone and John, the father who left the household after becoming a one-hit wonder on the country-music scene more years ago than anyone wants to remember. Nowlan and Thompson deserve credit for keeping the sentimentality quotient relatively low. In the cast, Blethyn gets first-rate support from Chittenden and Booth as the lovestruck youngsters; overacting by Wilson as the disabled brother mars some otherwise effective scenes, however. While the glimpses of Tim and Jill having steamy sex seem calculated to maximize youth-audience appeal, without them the picture would seem even more conventional and predictable than it is. England and its former colonies have an apparently endless supply of opportunities for aging but energetic actresses to play aging but energetic women with eccentric but understandable ambitions. Although this is far from the worst of the lot, the folks who made it are in for a big disappointment if they really expect the sequel(s) the title implies. – David Sterritt
