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Strange bedfellows - Paul Hogan, Michael Caton, Pete Postlethwaite, Dean Murphy

Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

They're close mates. Not THAT close.

60-year-old Ralph Williams (Michael Caton) and his 58-year-old best mate, Vince Hopgood (Paul Hogan), have money problems. Vince spots a newspaper headline: the government has passed new legislation giving same-sex couples equal tax breaks to married folk. Vince persuades a very reluctant Ralph that they should register as a same-sex couple - they can pool their incomes and create a family trust and only the Tax Department will ever know! Two weeks later a letter arrives, an investigator is coming to audit their claim. Suddenly, Ralph and Vince have a week to learn how to pose as a loving homosexual couple in a small town that knows them as anything but...

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film Australia country comedy gay straight couple

Persons of interest

Paul Hogan .... Vince Hopgood
Michael Caton .... Ralph Williams
Pete Postlethwaite .... Russell McKenzie
Amanda Monroe .... Amanda
Roy Billing .... Fred Coulston
Christopher Kirby .... Tim
Stewart Faichney .... Screenwriter
Dean Murphy .... Screenwriter
Dean Murphy .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film festivals:

Cinematic Intelligence Agency Trenchcoat Awards 2004: Nominated: Best Australian or New Zealand film
if Awards 2004: Won: Box Office Achievement

See also I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry
Studios and distributors:

Becker Entertainment

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Strange bedfellows is the return echo of Priscilla: Queen of the desert.

Both are camp, silly and Australian, but Priscilla was written from the point of view of the oppressed minority by the oppressed minority. Bedfellows is from the point of view of the oppressive majority. That said, at least they are trying to examine the issue. When Priscilla was first released, homosexuals in Hollywood were still psychos, pædophiles and serial killers. Two decades later and no film is complete without a gay character, especially if they're funny (see My best friend's wedding). Bedfellows does a lot to help that process of openness and acceptance along because it's about heterosexual people in a heterosexual world. Its intended audience is heterosexuals.

Whew. What a paragraph.

Anyway, this blokey little comedy is fun, in the amateur theatre meaning of the word: unsophisticated, uncomplicated, unworldly. There are better films about two straights pretending to be something they're not - such as Some like it hot or its new millennium update Connie & Carla - but Strange bedfellows has all the likeable Aussie larrikin charm of The nugget or The hard word. It's a good way to look at the other side of the fence (whichever side you're on).