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Strange planet

Threat advisory: Guarded - General risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

3 guys, 3 girls, 365 days to get it together.

Two groups of unconnected friends are trying to find their place in life.

Judy (Claudia Karvan) thinks that concentrating on her career will allow her to overcome her dangerous father complex...

Alice's (Naomi Watts) broken heart and strict moral code has caused inertia to set in...

Sally (Alice Garner) just wants to experience everything life has to offer.

And the boys are no better off:

Ewan (Tom Lang) is a womanising lawyer who decides that he hates law and doesn't believe in love...

Joel's (Aaron Jeffrey) seemingly perfect life is shattered when his wife leaves him...

Neil (Felix Williamson) is desperately seeking love.

Iver the next 12 months, the two groups of friends travel down various paths, seeking love and fulfillment, with every turn leading them away from what they'd hoped to find.

It's New Year's Eve. Life in the metropolis has kept the two groups of friends apart, but now destiny brings them together in a remote beach house. The new year is looking brighter already....

Persons of interest

Claudia Karvan .... Judy
Naomi Watts .... Alice
Alice Garner .... Sally
Tom Long .... Ewan
Aaron Jeffery .... Joel
Felix Williamson .... Neil
Hugo Weaving .... Steven
Rebecca Frith .... Amanda
Marshall Napier .... Robert
Loene Carmen .... Amy
Heidi McDonald .... Bridget
Harry Cripps .... Paul
Stavros Kazantzidis .... Screenwriter
Emma-Kate Groghan .... Screenwriter
Emma-Kate Groghan .... Director

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Bits and pieces.

This film has been made in the 90s school of filmmaking: Sex, drugs, house. Dykes, money, angst. Cut and paste.

The story is interesting enough, a giant soap opera involving six people and the strangers they meet who are, ironically, friends with other strangers the other people are meeting. Six people in search of love, looking in all the wrong places until (*Shudders*) destiny brings them together and they instantly all fall in love with the perfect partner. Cliché alert! Unwilling suspension of disbelief alert! Destiny is just another word for "couldn't think of a logical way to get these people together so we invoked the gods". Deus ex machina is unacceptable.

There's a nice blackness to Strange planet, as there is with most Austrtalian stories, just not enough. This story needs a good, solid twist to make it work. The happy Hollywood ending (no doubt with the overseas market in mind) just doesn't fit the rest of the film, the characters or the genre. Austrtalian stories are dark! Even the unofficial national song (Waltzing Matilda) is about a guy who commits suicide. Time to get with the programme, folks!

Hmmm, I'm rambling. Maybe too much medication again.

Strange planet is good enough for a night in with half a dozen videos, but it's never going to be famous.

Security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Medium level sex scenes, drug use, medium level coarse language)

Surveillance time

96 minutes (1:36 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

Film:12 January 2000