Through its trite, and grating production, the cinematic buffoonery of Rachel Perkins’ 2010 adaption of Jimmy Chi’s Bran Nue Dae ineptly depicts an assortment of racial and religious stereotypes and sexual innuendos. The film is a feeble excuse for a 1960’s nostalgic Bollywood inspired musical. It shoots for light-hearted satire but ultimately proves staggeringly unavailing.
Bran Nue Dae’s unyielding and fragmented storyline leaves viewers confused and dissatisfied. The film contains an overbearing use of stereotypes, portraying Aboriginal men as drunken nymphomaniac idlers, Catholics as oppressive purists and Germans as hostile madmen. If you believed the merciless script couldn’t get any worse, it does. The film exudes an extreme vitality, but despite this is ultimately uninspiring and flat.
At a quick glance, the script sounds enticing – a classically hilarious road trip film which had the potential to become a feel-good Australian classic. Director Rachel Perkins could have saved this film from being single-handedly predestined by its unwieldy cut- and- dry plot. If refined appropriately the film could have been a highly
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The end result, however, comes off as brightly colored fluff, deflating any actual attempt to engage political and personal strife, as the bubbly overflow softens the sting. The songs are merely acting as lyrically simplistic devices for characters to voice their bountiful pride; right before Willy busts out of the seminary singing there is nothing I would rather be than be an Aborigine, a scene inscribed into the minds of all viewers. Politically the film doesn’t tackle Indigenous issues head on but takes them in its stride. An undercurrent of protest remains but with tongue firmly in cheek: the Catholic church’s attitude to ‘useless blackfellas in