FAT PIZZA VERSUS HOUSOS

Australia, 2014, 90 minutes, Colour.
Angry Anderson, Tahir Bilgic, John Boxer, Guild Door, Paul Fenech.
Directed by Paul Fenech.

One has to be a fan of SBS’s Pizza series as well as The Housos series, both initiated by writer, director, actor, Paul Fenech.

While ABC television created the series Upper Middle Opens, these series are really Low, Lower, Lowest Bogans – and Fenech did produce for TV, Bogan Hunters. These are Bogans at their most basic. And the action happens in the outer suburbs of Sydney.

Concerning Fact Pizza: the manager took to an opponent with a chainsaw and got 15 years in jail; now he is getting out and his dominating Italian mother is there to meet him, continually rouse on him, taking him to an estate agent to look at a shop property, to lease it, to start up the Pizza Takeaway again.

Concerning Housos: we see rough, very rough people in their homes, getting welfare, try to manage – or not manage well – their children, with the grandmother on the bed calling out for Pizza!

Politicians in the area are campaigning, looking up-market in the streets, being attacked by some of the locals. The politics and issues of Sunnyvale, where the film is set, are similar to those of 2014, State and Federal, with specific attacks on the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and issues of police, gangs, welfare… And a certain amount of television coverage.

There are also employment and unemployment, the dole, Centrecare. And, again, there are issues of people from the Pacific Islands and other locations getting jobs for which they are not qualified, muckups, and some prejudicial statements.

And there are, gangs, mixed race, with an aggressive dwarf, violence and threats. The local police are very little help, more interested in food than other matters.

The film builds up to confrontations, local comic situations, and some kind of return to the status quo.

Lots of vulgarity, some incessant swearing, and Paul Fenech’s idea of sending up Bogan life in the suburbs.