The Castle

As I have said before on this blog, when it comes to English movies I prefer to watch thrillers and horror flicks (of course never alone!). But once in a while a movie comes along like a breath of fresh air – the movie from Down Under, 'The Castle”, was one of them. And what’s more, this time I watched it since the beginning. :-)

I must confess that from the title it sounded like one of those “Hapless travellers trapped in a haunted mansion” movies. But within first few minutes I knew that this was a comedy. It would have been a bit hard to understand the Aussie accents and so for a change I was glad that there were sub-titles.

“The Castle” revolves around the saying that a man’s house is his castle. So enter the Kerrigans, a Melbourne family which has the airport almost in their back yard. Their happy and contented world is in danger of being shattered when the Government decides that it wants their and their neighbors’ land to expand the airport. The Kerrigans refuse to be cowed down and decide to fight back for their home.

This being the first Aussie movie I watched, there was no reason why I would find a familiar face. So, Eric Bana as the Kerrigans’ son-in-law Con was a surprise though he has a minuscule role. The acting prowess of the cast - except for the actor who played the man of the family, Darryl Kerrigan – isn’t something to write home about. But since I don’t know much about the Aussie flim industry I am not sure if they were the leading actors and actresses.

The dialogues were crisp. Watch out especially for Kerrigans’ Middle Eastern neighbor Farouk. I doubled up laughing when he innocently says that he doesn’t mind these planes just flying above his house because the ones in Beirut drop bombs!

Imdb.com says that another Aussie movie “The Dish” was a bigger hit. I remember reading that it was shot at a place called Parkes because it has a telescope that transmitted images of Neil Armstorng’s landing on moon. As an aside, the same article also mentioned that Parkes is suffering financially because of its investment in some form of synthetic CDO called Torquay (named after an Aussie town).

Oh well, if I watch “The Dish” anytime, I promise that you will definitely read about it here, mate :-)