In the last 10 years the only Australian comedy which really appears to have hit the mark is The Castle. Let's Get Skase attempts to tap into the Working Dog humour that has made the former D-Gen/ Late Show creators so successful - but fails dismally.
Australian comedy, once the backbone of our movie industry, appears to be plumbing a dry well at the moment. Let's Get Skase joins The Wog Boy and the disastrous Reckless Kelly among recent Oz films that provide you with one laugh for every half hour that it lasts. The problem is probably further reflected by the dearth of quality sitcoms on Australian telly at the moment. Sadly the best Oz sitcom of recent times is Hey Dad, a show that has been off the air for around seven years now and wasn't even all that funny. Greed was good in the 1980s and Christopher Skase lived by Gordon Gecko's creed, accruing wealth through his company Qintrex and then deserting the investors when the going got tough, heading to Spain.
This film focuses on the Australian public's outrage at his low act and the doomed attempts by the Australian public to bring him back.
Failing restauranteur Peter Dellasandro (co-writer Lachy Hulme) stars as the man destined to free hundreds of mum and dad investors from the debt yoke of Qintrex by bringing Our Man in Majorca back to face the music. Strangely the creditors are happy to ask a con man to retrieve a con man. Hulme's dress sense and facial hair should be condemned - he looks like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. The usually commendable Alex Dimitriadis also features, suffering at the hand of a dud script, while his co-stars (a cast of nobodies), to be very basic, suck. Let's Get Skase is like a beginner's archery class with most of the jokes missing the target. In the end Christopher Skase has the last laugh. He died several months before this audio visual obscenity was released, plunging Let's Get Skase into further mediocrity. For me, the best part of the film was the footage of Malcolm Blight booting that long distance goal to steal victory for North Melbourne in a football match in the late 1970s. The moment acts as inspiration for our head Skase chaser but makes the rest of us wish we were watching something near as exciting. Weekly recommended rental: The Castle (1997). Starring Bill Caton, Stephen Curry, Anne Tenney, Eric Bana, 'Bud' Tingwell and Sophie Lee. Just to remind you that Australian movies can be funny.
