The Adventures of Barry McKenzie

Humphries' intentions were always highly ambiguous as McKenzie can be read as an outlandish parody of parochial Australia and/or as a celebration of the more unsavoury aspects of its national identity, presented here in an absurdly exaggerated fashion. Time hasn't resolved this debate, but it remains a gleefully anarchistic, if obviously dated, comedy that lives on Crocker's hilarious pitch perfect portrayal of a complete ignoramus whose boorish behaviour is both charming and repellant.

An amusing concept for a movie: an Aussie comes to Britain and slags off everyone with his foul mouth and large vocabulary. Kinda poetic in that regard at times, and there's something cathartic in its playful nastiness. Though it's just not well assembled as a film, and features a scene of a band playing to a small crowd, a sign that your script is too short and you need to pad out your movie.

54.500

Really dumb and kind of pointless, but some scenes were kind of fun (I can't get that 'One-Eyed Trouser Snake' song out of my head). Barry Crocker has an oddly likable presence, but everyone else was pretty annoying. The humour was typical Australian humour (ie, awful), and it seemed like it was trying too hard to be Australian and it just got on my nerves. I have to wonder how non-Australians would go with it, because every word out of someone's mouth is Aussie slang.

A few laughs with disturbing undertones.