The Big Steal

Do your self a favor and hire it on video its just a great movie and very funny also any bens films are worth a see ive seen em all

I can't believe I have never seen or ever heard about this film before. To impress a girl at his school, a boy trades in his car for a Jaguar from a crooked second-hand car dealer. It was just a good-spirited, funny and delightful film to watch. I also must admit I loved the fact that I have shot a film at that very car park where the boys work, and it was located on the street I used to live, so I have some personal connection to the locations as well. This aside, it is intelligent, amusing, and keeps the pace going throughout the film.

It was the first leading role for Ben Mendelssohn and a spirited performance by Claudia Karvan. It is also good to see Steve Bisley performance. It can be hard for me to shake his role in Police Rescue and Water Rats, but I have seen him in more and more films recently during his early career, and I have to admit he had a substantial part of building up Australian cinema.

One of the funniest films I have ever seen, and another triumph for Nadia Tass and David Parker after 'Malcolm'. Ben Mendelsohn as Daniel and Claudia Karvan as Joanna are wonderful, but the standout for me is Steve Bisley as the hilariously named Gordon Farkas, a sleazy used-car salesman with a rather embarrassing little secret. Marshall Napier and Maggie King are also delightful as Daniel's parents - the scene where they are playing Scrabble is particularly funny. Mendelsohn and Karvan recently appeared together in the outstanding TV series 'Love My Way'. (Damon Herriman also appears in the series.) If you haven't seen 'Love My Way' and you love these actors, buy/hire the DVDs NOW! You won't be disappointed.

I am Danny, and yes, I did have a girlfriend named Joanna who I was desperate to impress. My friends were there too: Alex, who actually was Russian but hung out with a group of Greek petrol heads, did indeed drive a Monaro - a Limited Edition in burgundy - and fancied himself something of a Lothario. My other good mate Peter would hate to have been told he was just a bit nerdy, but he was, and he worked part time at a parking station behind the cinema strip in Sydney while we were studying Engineering and going out and trying to impress the girls and all those things you do when you are 19 or 20.

My parents aren't perhaps quite as eccentric as the parents of the movie Danny, but they are close, and certainly keen on Scrabble and wordplay, and while there wasn't actually a Nissan Cedric in the family (it was actually a Mazda) it was a family in-joke. They also happened to be friends with some of the people involved in making this movie, so stories about my misadventures with the Jaguar, and Joanna and so on obviously got back.

The strangest thing it was then to see the movie, in company with several of the people whose lives were depicted, when it first came out. We had no real inkling of where the story had come from, beyond "hey, it is about a boy with a Jag, like yours". So many scenes I'd lived through (and some I only wished I had) were up there on the screen. And so many in jokes, like the reference to the Jensen Interceptor (which Peter had), and the horror of being caught driving a Volvo. Joanna really did say "nice car - what is it?" and "I'm not really into cars", though to some extent her character is an amalgam of the real Joanna and another girl I went out with (who had a father in the property development game, and who did front me to tell me what he expected and what would happen if I misbehaved with his daughter). The Jaguar really did leave me in the lurch in the middle of the Cross and on several other occasions, and undergo an engine swap, and there's too many others to list. Farkas was a lot like the bloke in the Eastern Suburbs to whom I traded the Mazda on the Jaguar too: Steve Bisley may not have met him but he really nailed the character.

In fact in the end I came out of the cinema thinking "how did they know all about that" and "I didn't think I'd even told Mum and Dad some of that stuff", and with my friends asking the same question. That is how close to the truth it was.

My view of it all is therefore coloured, but I did really enjoy it. It really is a picture of a time I remember with fondness, and in some respects where it didn't quite happen the way it is depicted well, it should have.

If ever there was a great duo , it would have to be Ben Mendelsohn and Claudia Carvan. This movie is a down to earth , no rubbish , personification of youth in Australia. I have seen this movie many times and still want to see it over and over again. True Blue Aussie humour at its best.