Critical Review and Bibliography of Australian Film
Danny Deckchair (2003)
Reviewed by Jo Keenan
Part I
Credits 1
Director: Jeff Balsmeyer
Writer: Jeff Balsmeyer
Danny Morgan: Rhys Ifans
Glenda Lake: Miranda Otto
Trudy Dunphy: Justine Clark
Sandy Upman: Rhys Muldoon
Producer: Andrew Mason
Executive Producers: Howard Baldwin
Karen Elise Baldwin
Carol Hughes
William J. Immermann
Cinematographer: Martin McGrath
Production Companies: City Productions P/L
Macquarie Film Corporation
Release Dates 1
Australia 31 July 2003
Cannes Film Festival: 16 May 2003
Toronto Film Festival: 13 September 2003
Paris Film Festival: 2 April 2004
Box Office 2
Australian box office figures:
Week ending 20/08/03 (3 weeks in release) - $939,446
Week ending 27/08/03 (4 weeks in release) - $995,593
Bibliography of interviews
I found it notoriously difficult to find any interviews with any of the cast and crew for this film. The only one I came across was Peter Thompson's Sunday review which included an interview with director Jeff Balsmeyer. The transcript can be seen at:
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/film_reviews/article_1341.asp
Bibliography of reviews
Danny Deckchair was
extensively reviewed by many newspapers and these can be accessed via
Factiva.com (www.factiva.com), the
internet-based database of newspaper articles.
One such interesting article was a review by Sandra Hall of The Sydney Morning Herald on 2 August, 2003, ('Pass the Helium').
Other reviews included the reliable Margaret Pomeranz and
David Stratton on SBS's The Movie Show,
the transcript of which can be found at http://www.sbs.com.au/movieshow/reviews.php3?id=1173
Stratton also provided a review in Variety magazine, which
was found via Proquest: http://0proquest.umi.com.prospero.murdoch.edu.au/pqdweb?index=3&did=000000383199071&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1082019326&clientId=20829
Other
useful sources include Australian internet-based film sites such as Cinephilia
(http://www.cinephilia.net.au/show_detailed_review.php?movieid=1904),
and Urban Cinefile, of which you need to be a subscriber, www.cinefile.com.au. Of course,
there's always the opinion of the world-wide public, to be found at the
Internet Movie Database (IMDb), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337960/.
Apart from
newspapers (sourced from the internet), the only other print source found was a
review in Australian film magazine, Metro ('Far and Away - Taking a Ride with Danny
Deckchair", no.
138). Reviews were also conducted in popular magazines, such as Who Weekly, but archived copies were
unavailable at time of writing.
Online Presence
Aside from the many archived reviews and the obligatory page on the IMDb, Danny Deckchair also rated a mention with a brief synopsis on the Australian Film Commission's (AFC) website (www.afc.gov.au.). Deckchair also has its own official website, www.dannydeckchair.com. The website, apart from including a trailer and photo gallery, contains scant information about the film that the public is already able to find elsewhere, which is quite a disappointment. Most official film websites provide some sort of competition, interactive game or other gimmicks, such as computer wallpapers and screensavers. Perhaps this is testament to the film's limited budget.
I also visited sites invariably linked with the AFC, such as the Australian Film Institute (AFI - www.afi.org.au.), as well as websites for the Cannes, Toronto and Paris Film Festivals.
Information Research Methods
Inevitably, the first place I turned to for information on Danny Deckchair was the internet, where these days such a mine of information is to be had on a subject if you know how to look for it (and maybe spend some money, too). The first website I approached was the film mecca of the IMDb, which provided initial information such as cast and crew credits.
I then moved to traditional print sources, such as industry journals and magazines and also newspaper reviews (for this I turned to archived, actual copies of The West Australian, for example, but with no success). Realising that print source information was going to be limited, I returned to the internet for more in-depth and detailed information, such as box office figures (very hard to come across - as a result, I am now a subscriber to Urban Cinefile for the next month), release dates and also more obscure reviews.
I was disappointed with the set-up of the AFC's website. Understandably, there have been hundreds of Australian films and as such I did not expect a lot of information, but nevertheless still expected more than the cast/crew rundown and brief synopsis that I did get. I also searched the entire Cannes Film Festival site with almost no mention made of the film, yet it was screened there only last year (2003).
Because of the film's recent release - and the fact that it is yet to be released in many international cinemas, including the United States - there is still quite a lot of information available on the film, especially on the internet, to be found. It is simply a matter of picking out the good from the bad, the helpful from the useless.
Part II
Critical review
The plot of Danny Deckchair is really very simple, and on the surface at least, sounds like a good idea. Suburban bloke, Danny, is stuck in a rut; he feels trapped with his holier-than-thou girlfriend, Trudy, and needs to get out. The only way out of his rut is up - literally. He ties helium-filled balloons to his deckchair - just to see if it will work - and takes off for the heavens, or so Trudy and his mates believe. Danny flies into a thunderstorm - metaphoric, I feel, of the tumult of his life and emotions in the city; a baptism of fire of passing from his old life into the new - and comes out the other side over calm, peaceful countryside. Then, with a spectacular bang - actually a firework colliding with his helium balloons - he falls on the path to finding true love and happiness by landing in the garden of a lonely country parking inspector, Glenda, with the obligatory hurdles thrown in along the way for them to overcome.
If I were a film critic writing a review of Danny Deckchair at the time of its release, I could sum it up in a three word headline - 'Pleasant, But Predictable'. For it's precisely what this film is. It is a nice film, it's pleasant, likeable, has attractive leads, is often laugh out loud funny, has great scenery and the audience doesn't really have to think. Or do they? I admit the first time I saw this film was to review it, and I tried hard to view it as a passive audience member would have done initially, but it was hard. While I enjoyed Danny Deckchair, there were nagging little questions that kept popping up and eventually were never answered. Questions such as what attracted Danny and Trudy to each other in the first place? He's a scruffy blue-collar worker (initially) who's content with camping; she's out to climb the social hierarchy to fame and fortune.
As David Stratton mentions in both his reviews, I find the fact that Trudy couldn't find a photo of Danny to put on the news unbelievable. The fact that the small town of Clarence needs a parking inspector (Glenda) also bothers me. But the biggest problem I have is with Glenda. After watching Deckchair the second time around, my suspicions were confirmed. During the film, Glenda never asks Danny what his name is (she only calls him 'Professor', after she invents a story about Danny being an old uni professor staying with her), and only calls him by Danny at the very end of the film, after he is exposed for who he really is. While Danny tells her it isn't important to know who he is or how he got there, any sensible woman, whether they were attracted to him or not (as Glenda clearly is), would have tortured him until she got the answers she wanted. So why Glenda doesn't do the same is both perplexing and implausible.
I agree with David Stratton - the script is full of these little holes and it unsurprisingly weakens the whole piece. The film is also rather predictable. It is clear very early on that Danny will be exposed by his jealous rival, Dave the local police sergeant, for the fraud that he is, that Glenda will get upset over it (rather hypocritical, considering she didn't want to know), but they will overcome this slight bump in the road and end up happily ever after together, travelling the world camping. However, it's not all bad. Miranda Otto is delightful as Glenda, despite the fact the she is a parking inspector, and plays the part of the lonely country woman wonderfully. Also to be highly commended is Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, who does a great job of an Australian accent, with the odd colloquial phrase thrown for authenticity and the frustrated blue-collar worker who overnight is transformed into a sensitive political campaigner. But this raises another question - why did the producers bring an actor all the way from Wales when a competent Australian actor could have played the part equally as well? It's a question that The Sydney Morning Herald's Sandra Hall also asked in her review.
Critical uptake and position in Australian film
Reviews of Danny Deckchair have been divided. Some, like Sunday's Peter Thompson have called the film 'a sheer delight from beginning to end'. Louise Keller of Urban Cinefile stated that it was 'a highly original and delightfully funny romantic comedy'. Other reviewers have not been so kind. David Stratton called Deckchair an 'uneven romantic comedy' with 'rather thin and unconvincing material'. Most reviews were quite mixed, such as Metro Magazine's Matt Dillon's comments about it being a 'competently crafted film', but that 'after soaring a little while, you could say, like the balloons on Danny's deckchair, it eventually runs out of gas.' I personally am in the mixed category as per my reasons stated above - that it's a pleasant, even funny film, but with too many holes to ignore that keep you from fully enjoying the film. Because of this I think Dillon had a very valid point in his review when he wrote that Deckchair is 'not a film that should bear a lot of analysis.' I think Balsmeyer really needed to fill the gaps to make a truly good film. Some reviewers, such as Cinephilia's Ruth Williams, recognised the predictability of the film when she stated that Deckchair is 'another romantic comedy that follows the rules so faithfully that the audience is left with nothing new.'
The film's mixed reviews, both among the critics and audiences has seen Danny Deckchair become one of a number of Australian films in the last couple of years that is consistently disappointing distributor's expectations in terms of box office revenue. After four weeks in release, Deckchair had accumulated just under $1 million in takings, compared to the last really successful Australian comedy, 2000's The Dish which took $12,558,648 after four weeks in release (it went on to take over $17 million) 2. The Australian film industry is currently in the midst of a serious form slump, with mediocre films being churned out that audiences just don't want to see. This is a far cry from the Australian filmic heyday of the mid 1990's to the turn of the new century when low budget, but brilliant, quality films such as The Castle, Muriel's Wedding, Strictly Ballroom and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert were being released to great success, both critically and at the box office.
Industry chiefs, such as Australian Screen Directors Association head, Richard Harris, acknowledge as such and realise that it needs to be fixed and soon. In an interview with The Australian's Lynden Barber last September, Harris says that the recent bleak box office takings have been like "watching a car crash" with the number of failures that are being released 3. In an August 2003 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Film Finance Corporation chief Brian Rosen believed he knows what is wrong with the industry - it's the fact that "we're making similar sorts of films. They're not standing out from other films, so the desire to see them is not that great", he told interviewer Vicky Roach 4. Australian films in general are widely respected. We usually make low budget, but good quality films that are often critically acclaimed and have multitudes of talented actors, directors and technicians working on them. This current bad trend needs to change quickly if the industry is to maintain its respected reputation.
Circumstance of production
Danny Deckchair, like most Australian films that get released these days, was financed with the help of the Australian Film Commission. It also received additional funding with the help of the Macquarie Film Corporation. It was filmed primarily on location in the New South Wales town of Bellingen, which was the setting for the film's fictitious town of Clarence. The film reportedly had an advertising budget of $2 million, but Ifans and Otto apparently didn't help much in the way of promoting it (which would explain why no interviews) 4. As mentioned, the film did very poorly at the box office, not even taking $1 million after 4 weeks.
Prior work of cast/crew
Amazingly, Danny Deckchair is the first feature film from American director Jeff Balsmeyer. Balsmeyer has worked in Australia many years on such top films as The Nugget and Lantana as a storyboard artist 1 and therefore is probably quite familiar with Australian film industry. As a writer, Balsmeyer is also quite inexperienced, this being his writing debut, but his directing talents are yet to be fully tested with experience. Because of his relative inexperience, there is little work that we can compare this to, but for a first effort, it is commendable, but requires improvement, especially in the script.
Welsh actor Rhys Ifans is best known for his hilarious supporting turn as Spike, Hugh Grant's housemate from hell in the successful Roger Michell comedy of Notting Hill, also starring Julia Roberts. Danny, prior to his life changing lift off, will remind audiences greatly of Spike, especially in appearance with Ifan's lanky figure, scruffy blonde hair and unkempt facial hair, but that's probably where the similarities between his two characters end.
Australian Miranda Otto is a long time actress whose star is on the rise, especially in Hollywood, thanks to her strong performance as Eowyn in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings epic trilogy. However, Otto has been in the industry for years with such diverse roles as Patsy in Doing Time for Patsy Cline to the American Mrs Hurtle in the British period mini-series drama The Way We Live Now. Her turn as Glenda is certainly a departure from Eowyn, but she seems to play characters who are strong women quite well.
Genre
As mentioned in some of the reviews literature, Danny Deckchair is a romantic comedy. Basically, it's a film with comedic elements that has a love story at its core. As an Australian comedy, it seems to me to lack the over-the-top, stereotypical characters associated with successful Australian comedies such as The Castle. The only thing truly stereotypical about it, is that the small town of Clarence is depicted as a typical small town - gossipy, where everyone knows everybody else's secrets and nothing about someone's private life is sacred.
The characters actually appear to me somewhat normal - especially in Danny's Sydney life, the characters are those you could find living next door to you. That, for me, was a little bit disappointing. Even characters that are usually the target of outrageous stereotyping - the greasy politician, the gay guy - are seriously toned down. Deckchair's greatest comedic sense comes from its situational comedy, not its characters, though the biggest laugh I had was when resident gay guy, Darren, starts his nude poses for the town's ladies art class.
Other romantic comedies, such as Strictly Ballroom, have been more successful in that they had stronger main characters, and the minor characters are true stereotypes. The parallel between Deckchair and Strictly Ballroom is the transformation with one of the main characters. With Deckchair, it is Danny himself who gets a haircut and becomes more sensitive, feels free (although Glenda also transforms, by coming out of her shell). In Ballroom, it is Scott's new dancing partner, the wallflower Fran, who transforms into the beautiful, confident woman who shines in Scott's affection. The glaring difference between these transformations is that Danny's occurs virtually overnight with no clear reason, while Fran's is much more subtle, and her growing confidence and love for Scott makes her transformation seem much more natural. Danny Deckchair certainly belongs to the romantic comedy genre, but it is not as strong as previous Australian romantic comedies, such as Strictly Ballroom.
Conclusion
Danny Deckchair was based on a good idea, with good casting, but was let down by the fact that the script needed more work to avoid nagging questions that some audiences found themselves asking. While a pleasant enough film, it is critically mediocre films like this that is keeping audiences away from the box office, contributing to the film industry's form slump in general. For audiences to return to Australian films and comedies in particular, writers and directors need a fresh, new approach, not a rehash of storylines that were successful nearly 10 years ago.
Perhaps in it's further international releases this year, Danny Deckchair may find some inspired audiences, but for Australian audiences this formula is nothing new, and the successful comedies of The Dish, The Castle, Muriel's Wedding and the like were far superior. Jeff Balsmeyer and his team had a good idea for a story, but it sank back to earth with lazy scriptwriting and some questionable casting decisions. I hope Balsmeyer learns from his first feature film experience in the future, so that his next feature will help bring Australian films out of the slump they're in. It's vital for the industry's future viability and reputation.
References