Dir. Rolf de Heer. Australia 2007. 84 min.
Deprived of the frantic mania and destructively anarchic passion that drove the best silent comedies, Rolf de Heer's attempt to revive the genre turns out into another capricious whimsy for a director whose erratic career has never followed a conventional path. Shot on expired black and white stock with a hand-cranked camera, and with inter-titles instead of dialogue, this tentative sci-fi parody imitates classic silent comedies such as Keystone Cops, but is neither funny nor hectic enough to be truly entertaining. Most likely great fun to make, the result is unlikely to go much further than a few festival dates and some specialized art house screenings.

It is 1907 and Dr. Plonk (Lunghi), the classic mad scientist, claims the world will come to an end in 2008. Since no one believes him, he invents a time machine that will allow him to investigate the future and prove his theory.

Assisted by the deaf and dumb Paulus (Blackwell), watched over by his corpulent wife (Szubanski), and with the harried maid (Paterson de Heer, the director's daughter) running in and out of the frame, Dr. Plonk first sends his dog Tiberius, then himself and his assistant into the future.

His initial experiments send them to both the wrong time and place, but Dr. Plonk eventually believes he has found his proof when, in one of his time-travelling trips to 2007, he sees a television programme announcing the following day's attraction: a show called 'The End of the World'.

The art direction has just the right kind of dizziness about it, the cast all look the part, and there plenty of authentic kicks up the backside, but the jokes quickly wear thin.

The obligatory chases contain amusing visual flashes, but seem too calculated and predictable to make them truly uproarious.

Everything in the film is far too well behaved for its own good, and the necessary raw edge is missing. There are a few sharp quips on contemporary concerns, as when Plonk is named as a terrorist by the modern authorities, but they are few and far between.

Since it is structured more like an ensemble piece, none of the actors is much more than a pawn, and have very little space to display his or her talents.

Sharper editing would have helped the film. On the positive side, de Heer's regular collaborator Graham Tardif provides a lively score, faithful in spirit to the silent movies the film celebrates.

Director
Rolf de Heer

Production companies
Vertigo Productions (Aus)

International sales
Wild Bunch (Fr)

Executive producers
Sue Murray
Domenico Procacci
Bruce Menzies

Producers
Julie Ryan
Rolf de Heer

Screenplay
Rolf de Heer

Cinematography
Judd Overton

Editor
Tania Nehme

Production design
Beverley Freeman

Music
Graham Tardif

Main cast
Nigel Lunghi
Paul Blackwell
Magda Szubanski
Phoebe Peterson de Heer

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