Written/Directed by Chris Cudlipp
A Critical Review and Bibliography
CREDITS:
Producer… JIM
McELROY
Co-producer… DES
POWER
Cinematography… BRIAN
J. BREHENY
Film Editing… BILL
MURPHY
Production Design… SALLY
CAMPBELL
Costume Design… CHRISTELLE
CORONEOS
Makeup Department… PAUL
PATTISON
Production Management… BRENDON BOYD &
SHARON MILLER
Assistant Directors… TODD
FELLMAN & JAMIE LESLIE
Art Department… CALLIE
WILLIAMS
Sound Department… PAUL
CLARKE & BEN WYATT
Script Consultants… MIKEY
ROBINS & TONY MORPHETT
CAST
(in order of appearance):
CLAUDIA… ALEKSANDRA
VUJCIC
CATHY… DEBORAH
MAILMAN
GWEN… KIM
HILLAS
ANTON… REL
HUNT
MAX… KEN
RADLEY
SARA… SAM
HEALY
DISTRIBUTORS:
BEYOND
FILMS (AUSTRALIA)
UIP
(AUSTRALIA)
RATED:
M 15+
RELEASE
DATES AND RELATED INFORMATION:
Dear Claudia opened on February 25th 1999 (Urbancinefile). It entered the box office top 20 list
at number 16. The film was shown
on 73 screens in that week and made $127,689 (averaging $1,749 per
screen). Unfortunately it dropped
out of the top 20 after the first week and I could not obtain any more
results. However it has been seen
in countries such as Iceland, Latin America, Turkey and Scandanavia but the
film was only seen on the small screen.
AWARDS: Chris
Cudlipp received the Monte Miller award in 1996 for writing Dear Claudia
(Urbancinefile).
ABOUT
THE FILMMAKERS:
Chris Cudlipp came from an advertising background and
Dear Claudia was his first feature film.
He worked with producer Jim McElroy who is quite well known in the film
making circuit. His works include Mr
Reliable ‘1996’, Traps ‘1994’, The Last Wave
‘1977’ and Picnic at Hanging Rock ‘1975’.
As the film was poorly portrayed it was difficult to
find any interviews with the director and producer. Chris Cudlipp may have come to realise that he was in over
his head, as he has never made another film since. It appears that Chris has come from a family background in
media, as there are three other Cudlipps associated with financing the film.
REVIEWS:
As mentioned previously Dear Claudia did not receive
many possitive reviews. The
reviews that I discovered were at the following websites…
http://www.urbancinefile.com.au
http://elfilmcritic.com/hbs.cgi?movie=1619
COLLECTING
THE INFORMATION:
Due to the film being quite unsuccessfull, it was
difficult to obtain as much information as a more popular film. I searched the web almost to the point
of exhaustion trying to find information about the film. Although I could not get as much
information as I would have liked about the making of the film and its cost I
did however find a great deal of information on what people thought of the
film.
SYNOPSIS:
Dear Claudia is a lighthearted romantic comedy about a flying postman and an exotic barmaid from rural Queensland. They find themselves in trouble when the postmans' plane crashes and lands them in deep water. The characters form a bond from reading each other letters from the mail. However Claudia has a stolen 20 gold ingots and is hiding them in the plane.
The
story regularly crosses back to the small town from which they came and the
gossip begins to fly. The humour
of the two post office women and the news headlines keep the story alive.
Walter
(the flying postman) and Claudia’s future is up in the air and they are
running out of time…
PERSONAL
REVIEW:
I must admit that I had never seen Dear Claudia prior to this assignment. I chose it basically because no other people had investigated it, now I can see why. I found it quite difficult to obtain any information, as it was the directors first and last film. The only people’s names that I recognised were the producer Jim McElroy, the script consultant Mikey Robins and some of the actors. The cast was limited along with the humour.
Some
of the critics likened the film to movies such as Six Days, Seven Nights. But I thought that it reminded me of
CastAway (Tom Hanks) just with another person. I initially thought that if the film had Aussie icon Bryan
Brown in it then it had to be fairly decent, but I was wrong. I thought the acting was a little over
the top and corny. The lead
characters were very convincing with their so-called chemestry.
I
found it interesting that at times Walter found the mail more important than
the girl. It reminded me of the
question of ‘If you were strandard on a desert island, what two things
would you have with you?’
Overall
I thought that it was pretty average, it’s not the type of movie that I
would pay to go and watch at the cinemas.
But I didn’t fall asleep so it couldn’t have been that
bad. However it was one of the
longest 95 minute films that I have seen for a while.
CRITICAL
UPTAKE:
Dear Claudia is the type of film that I feel was expecting to do well and then flopped. The most common comment I have found about it was the remark… ‘Nice sandcastles’. Unfortunately that pretty much sums it up. It is the sort of movie that they would put on television on a Friday or Saturday night when the networks expect the least amount of viewers, and even then there is a good chance that it would be regarded as the ‘lemon of the week’.
I
don’t feel that the film has gained a higher audience appriceiation since
it has left the big screen the video store shelf.
SOME
COMMENTS:
Some viewers comments from (IMDb), Urbancinefile and efilmcritic websites.
“Tounge-in-cheek, slapstick, romantic farce”
Holly, 7/3/00, NYC
“A charming offbeat romantic comedy”
scastle-2, 19/11/99, Sydney Australia
“Nice sandcastles” Steve Baker, 27/2/99
“A poor man’s variation of Six Days, Seven
Nights”, “Woeful”,
Greg King, http://www.netau.com.au/gregking
Efilmcritic
ran a users pole and 83.33% thought that Dear Claudia was ‘total
crap’, whilst the other 16.67% thought that it was ‘pretty
bad’.
IMDb
gave it five stars out of ten rating.
PRIOR
WORK OF THE FILMMAKERS:
As mentioned previously Chris Cudlipp had not done any previous work in this field. But Jim McElroy however has done his fair share of producing…(IMDb)
Mr.
Reliable ‘1996’ (producer)
Traps
‘1994’ (producer)
Till
There was You ‘1990’ (producer)
“Late
Night With Jono and Danno” ‘1986’ (TV series producer)
Melvin,
Son of Alvin ‘1984’ (producer)
Year
of Living Dangerously, The ‘1982’ (producer)
Dangerous
Summer ‘1981’ (producer)
Last
Wave, The ‘1977’ (producer)
Let
the Balloon Go ‘1976’ (associate
producer)
Picnic
at Hanging Rock ‘1975’ (producer)
Cars
That Ate Paris, The ‘1974’ (producer)
POSITION
OF AUSTRALIAN FILM AND VALUE:
Unfortunately this film had little impact on Australian film. However it was available in other countries but for most of them it was only through TV and video. The information about how successful Dear Claudia was in other countries is somewhat limited, but i feel that the reviews speak for themselves. If our fellow Australians were unimpressed with the film then it is logical that the other countries would feel the same.
I
did find it rather interesting that on the video case it states that Dear
Claudia is not to be sold or rented in the United Kingdom or Ireland. I also found it interesting that all of
the other countries that the film was released in were non-English speaking
countries. This could raise the
question ‘Should we focus on promoting in English speaking
countries?’
By
Teneale Ashby
Murdoch University, 2002