FAT PIZZA
Australia, 2003, 90 minutes, Colour.
Paul Fenech, Tahir Bilgic.
Directed by Paul Fenech.
Fat Pizza is based on a television series which appeared on SBS Television. It had a cult following. This film will also have a cult following – though a ninety-minute film, cramming in episodes and jokes from the series, may not be as effective as a short brisk presentation.
As the title indicates, there is ethnic background to this story – this time Lebanese and Oriental.
The tone of the title also indicates the humour. It is very broad – the broadest. It is not in any way politically correct, attacking everybody and poking fun, even at Queen Elizabeth at the opening of the opera house which some may find too much. However, it is in the spirit of irreverent Australian humour, spiced with influences from a range of different ethnic cultures.
Those who enjoy broad (the broadest) satirical material will enjoy the jokes. People of a more delicate sensibility will find some of the material far too crass, unnecessarily in your face, the type of humour that can be called schoolboy humour, though some schoolboys may balk at some of the jokes.
The film is the work of Paul Fenech who appears as the central character (as well as in flashbacks to a boxing bout between one of his ancestors and Gandhi, irreverent material as well). He works at Fat Pizza in Bass Hill in Sydney, encounters a whole range of people, a Lebanese friend played by Tahir Bilgic, the co-writer, as well as a would-be boxer called Rocky, a bum, Angus Sampson as a junkie. There is an array of caricatured women characters, shouting mothers, sexy young women, including the Chinese fiancée of the owner of Fat Pizza, Bobo (Johnny Boxer). There are plenty of drug episodes as well.
There is satire on the police, on immigration officials... Some of these are played by Angry Anderson, Red Symons, Kamal, Elliot Goblet – and Jeff Fenech appears as himself, allegedly a relation to the actor-director.
Something of a cult movie (for fans, alien to others) – but not a culture movie.
