As an Australian currently living in Sweden, I enjoy the rare chance of getting to watch something Australian. Even if the movie itself turns out to be awful, seeing Australian brand food in the meal eating scenes and hearing real Australian accents and slang words is a novelty. But more importantly, with movies like Tom White, having lived in Australia makes me appreciate the dark humour and sarcasm that a lot of people miss. A perfect example of this is the scene with Tom and a homeless man (The homeless man's name has slipped my mind).
Homeless man: What's a man when he's dead? Tom: He's ****ing dead.
These sort of comments delivered in a deadpan way are typical of Australian humour, and also of Australian straight forward, honest attitudes. Unfortunately a lot of viewers from 'overseas' won't realize these sorts of one liners and overly negative comments are meant to be funny.
All this aside, Tom White is a great movie. It's essentially divided into parts. Each part of the movie focuses on the friendship between Tom and whoever he's currently living with. The friendships last about 20 minutes of screen time each, once the friendships end for various reasons, the film becomes about the next person Tom befriends. Because of this, watching Tom White is a bit like watching 4-5 different short films, with each friendship being its own film. All of the characters are interesting, including the minor characters, like the homeless aboriginal guy with a long grey beard and carrot top shaped hair.
If you have any romantic fantasies about living in Australia, let me tell you that this movie is a fairly accurate portrayal of Australian life and Australian people. You don't spend all day at the beach, seeing kangaroos is a novelty that gets old fast. The Australia in Tom White is the real Australia. The characters in the movie is what real Australians are like. Australians are like the people in this movie, not Steve Irwin. Living in Australia is like they live in the beginning of the film, it's not spending all day surfing.
