Trivia

Actor and comedian Shaun Micallef was characteristically tongue in cheek when discussing his role. He said: "I based my character on Richard III, assuming he was played by an appalling actor who couldn't remember his lines." Micallef had been loved for his TV characters, but big screen comedy presented a challenge. "It certainly is more embarrassing if you get it wrong. In television a failed gag can be passed off as whimsy - or sweetened in audio to give the impression people actually laughed at it. No such trickery or fudging with film."

Roz Hammond enjoyed working again with director Ted Emery who had directed her on two Shaun Micallef televisions shows, both 'Full Frontal' and 'The Micallef Program'. "He's a delight to work with. He's very generous and kind on set. He's got a silly, grumpy exterior, but he's a good comic director because he gets the joke really quickly, he knows what's funny."

Roz Hammond also loved working with Shaun Micallef again: "We're very good friends, although I only have one scene with him. He's absolutely fabulous." But Hammond rated her onscreen son, Normie Norman, played by actor Tom Budge as her funniest co-star: "Tom would have us doubled over all day in between takes. We'd come out with the sauciest things to say to each other and I'd think God, I'm playing his mother! He's a very funny boy." And playing opposite Kevin Harrington was also a joy. "It was really easy to love Kevin," says Hammond. "He's just so delicious it was easy to play the supportive wife." Hammond also admired her onscreen daughter Octavia Barron Martin. "We just clicked straight away. It was nice that our family got along really, really well. We had a great time being in Adelaide. We'd all come down from Sydney and Melbourne for the shoot so it was kind of like being on camp, it was lots of good fun."

Filmed in South Australia with the support of the South Australian Film Corporation, this movie featured the idyllic landscape of the Adelaide Hills and Mount Barker. The semi-rural location added to the film's atmosphere, with many locals participating enthusiastically as extras. "Some of them are redundant meat-workers themselves," said lead actor Kevin Harrington, who plays the central character of Wally Norman. "The locals really turned it on for us. They were really accommodating."

Wally Norman star, actor Kevin Harrington, summed the movie by saying: "It's a funny film, and it's funny for everyone - parents and kids. It's a legitimate family film without being soppy or sentimental. It has loads of laughs, especially for the kids, and a bit of a message for the parents to contemplate. And the family in the film gets on fantastically. Like a lot of Aussie families, they take the mickey out of each other, with love."

Mike Rann: the then Labor Party Premier of South Australia, as a man thrown out of seat by chairman. Rann would later make another appearance in another South Australian film, this time actually playing a political figure, Prime Minister Short, in director Rolf de Heer's 'Dr. Plonk' (2007).

Paul Makin: the Australian television presenter as Alan Unwin the Bookmaker.

John Singleton: as The Prime Minister of Australia.