A FEW LESS MEN

Australia, 2017, 92 minutes, Colour.
Xavier Samuel, Kris Marshall, Kevin Bishop, Ryan Corr, Sasha Horler, Deborah Mailman, Shane Jacobson, Lynette Curran, Jeremy Sims.
Directed by Mark Lamprell.

Words and phrases go through the mind, like fools, dills, dopes, some four-letter variations – but, the word chosen to describe the central characters of this film: idiotic.

Not that the writer, Dean Craig, whose principal credits include the American and the British versions of Death at a Funeral as well as this film’s predecessor, A Few Best Men, didn’t write them as idiotic intentionally and created a multitude of idiotic situations for them to display their idiocy. If an audience is in the vein, they may feel that this is the way to go for a laugh. If they are not in the vein, and the initial sequence, in animation form during the credits and then in actuality, with a fourth member of a bridal party of groom and best men falls over a cliff, grabbing the bottle of wine, saved from a number of death dangers and surviving – until crushed by a falling rock! And his body being laid out, complete with an erection which his three friends do their utmost to get rid of… If that does not get some laughs, and with some audiences it definitely won’t, then this film might be a lost cause.

Which in some ways is a pity because there are quite a number of key Australian performers in cameo roles who give their lines more than they probably deserve, including Jeremy Sims as an ill-fated pilot, Sasha Horler as an games park guide, Deborah Mailman with a few moments as a local policewoman, Shane Jacobson as a lonely outback man whose inspiration for hospitality comes from Norman, his mother and the Bates Motel, Lynette Curran perhaps trying to re-live her randy role forty + years earlier in Alvin Purple…

But the focus of attention is on the groom, Xavier Samuel who has to be the common sensed anchor in the group even when he loses his cool (and, with his two friends, he has every reason to). It is the two British actors who appeared in the earlier film, Kris Marshall and Kevin Bishop, who have to represent all that is really stupid in human nature – as embodied in British men in their 30s. At one stage, the groom refers to Kris Marshall’s Tom as a horny 15-year-old, which is something of a compliment. But, the most stupid is Kevin Bishop’s Graham, absolutely obtuse, absolutely unself-aware, putting his foot in his mouth all the time, actually inciting an audience to wish that he would be bumped off the screen (and the audience being willing to facilitate if only they could). Early in the piece, sitting in the cockpit of the plane, he touches an emergency button after being told not to and causes the plane crash…

The point of the plot is that they have to get their deceased friend back to London for his funeral, threatened by his cousin, London gangster (Ryan Corr blustering and shouting) – and their travels through Western Australia, carrying the coffin, through the desert, to a wild festival, to a roadside diner, to a country house, to Perth and to a mortuary. It might be a spoiler to say that they actually do get there despite all the odds but there is final mayhem, at the eulogy for the dead man.

And, just in case the audience did not get the point, there is over three minutes’ recapitulation and series of outtakes after the final credits!