Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla

A great thrill ride of a film, telling the mental disintegration of an ice cream salesman who has developed an unhealthy obsession for the central female character of a Home and Away style TV soap story. Depicts very effectively the sordid and lonely lifestyle of the main character but with touches of warmth and perverse humour throughout.

Not easily classified into any genre but a mix of dark comedy, psychological thriller, human drama, revenge horror and even spaghetti style western. It is not always clear where the lines, if any between reality and delusion are drawn in the increasingly fractured world of Warren (played with absolute conviction by Glenn Maynard) but it all builds to a cathartic and brutal finale.

One not to be missed in a world of formulaic, middle of the road and average cinema.

It starts off a bit iffy but once it gets into the plot it is a very intriguing film.

Gray Maynard is great in this film. The jerk off scenes are equally hilarious, disgusting and sad.

This is a great story about obsession.

The directing is very original and well done and so is the script you really start to care for Warren.

It catches you off guard by being absurd.

I have never seen a film before that uses a TV show in a movie as a learning toll for the plot . The video diary's are greatly done and you really start to see Warren in a different light. These videos were inspired by an actual stalkers video diary's.

This film seem like it should be a interesting film but it just doesn't get there. It follows an ice-cream van driver and soap opera fans life over a few months. During his work he meets one of the actors from the soap show and he has to put up with cruel people.

I would have to disagree with another review up here that claims it is similar to Bad Boy Bubby, which I loved. The only similarities I see is that they are both Australian films in which you feel sorry for the main character. In Bad Boy Bubby I was hanging on to see what would happen next because it kept you enthralled but in Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla I was just waiting for something of interest to happen.

The film feels like it is trying to do something that it has not achieved and as a result ended up as a slow boring drama that doesn't hold the viewers attention. I saw it listed as a dark comedy but found almost nothing in the film funny. I do not feel the need to watch this again and personally I would recommend watching something else over this.

If this is comedy, it is of a very dark sort: it does cover territory that Bad Boy Bubby did with more verve but, to it's credit, it has a unique take that is less surreal and is more a vignette than a tale. This movie is a huge easter egg hunt for fans of Australian (and NZ) cinema. For example; it is very much a twisted homage to the "man alone" genre, so the decor of the main character's house references the 70s/80s, when that genre ruled antipodean cinema. Don't let this put you off if this is terra incognita, the characters are very universal and the strokes very broad.

Definitely worth seeing, ignore the negative reviews, you can see that they are from writers who expect a healthy measure of saccharine in the recipe. If you don't have a sweet tooth, this movie is a rewarding dish; the flavours are simple and bitter. This is its greatest achievement; proving that a film doesn't have to be a melange of complex themes and complex characters to be a tasty dish.

I read a review of this movie suggesting there was some novel twists in the movie, unlike standard mainstream movies.

I was expecting fledgling auteurs to be making a mark in Australian cinematic history.

How wrong I was.

Being a native of west Melbourne suburbs, I found the locations were recognizable and accurately reflected the demographic in this movie. These being drug addicts and life's losers.

That was something I could suggest was positive about this movie. Along with nice cinematography and reasonable editing.

The script was slow, lacking vitality and the acting was dreary(Glenn Maynard stood out as particularly bad), uninspiring and flat. The characters were 2D and the plot was banal. Using periodic incidents of violence to make up for a missing story.

If this was a student film I would say it was a good first effort.

I am guessing that the cast and crew are trying to make their way in a 'cliquey' closed business and they have put this together to do something and prove their skills. Which are demonstrable in part but the movie failed as a whole.

Sad that lots of hard work has resulted in such a poor result. 2 stars - 1 is for effort, not for cinematic merit