Review: A Heartbeat Away

A Heartbeat Away
Dir. Gale Edwards
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: PG
Running Time: 91mins

I know it’s a bad sign when I am already looking around me within 30 seconds of a film beginning to gauge whether an audience is as taken aback as I. Such was the case during the opening credits of A Heartbeat Away, a film that takes mere minutes to stamp itself as Australia’s answer to The Room; an episode of SeaChange as directed by Tommy Wiseau. What begins as a potentially misguided, amateurish effort winds up a startling, discombobulating moviegoing experience that I shan’t too soon forget. A Heartbeat Away is an appalling effort from everyone involved that will have you questioning what everybody was thinking.

If you want plot, you get plot! And repeated over and over again, too! Set in Montague – because Shakespeare is exactly what this movie needed more of – A Heartbeat Away positions itself as a fantasy fable about a young rock musician who must take over his father’s ailing marching band after said father is nearly killed in a car accident. There’s enough quote unquote wackiness and quirkiness to fill the MCG, but nothing can quite prepare you for the amount of eye-popping awfulness that eventually presents itself for ridicule and mocking.


Much like The Room, it appears to have been directed by someone so hopelessly amateurish who knows not a thing about filmmaking, up to and including working with actors, dialogue, pacing, editing, cinematography, sets and plain old good taste. Gale Edwards is normally a stage director, apparently opera is her forte, and this makes so much sense in retrospect since she is probably used to dealing with overflowing stage presence in another language. Maybe Edwards has no idea how people actually talk in the real world? Maybe she’s never watched a movie since Star Wars in 1978 when swipe cuts were fancy and page roll edits were like something from the future.

Or, more likely, Edwards hasn’t seen a movie since 1983 when Flashdance was all the rage. How else to explain the inexplicable sequence where a young, attractive girl played by Isabel Lucas (as in played by an alien from Mars) dances to an awful pop tune surrounded by spotlights whilst wearing the costume wardrobe to Perfect.


I literally could not even begin to describe all the scenes from this movie that defy space, time, logic and reasoning. Like when Sebastian Gregory’s Kevin states that the marching band’s new routine must be top secret and yet they practice outdoors. Or how about the music store, in this town of surely no more than several thousand, that is somehow able to stock priceless guitars and somehow remains open for business despite there never even being a single customer? Or how about Colin Friels, who suddenly starts talking in a new accent as if he got bored on day and felt the need for a change? Or how about, strangest of all, the use of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to show off how young and hip the marching band really are. “Play something new and now! The Arctic Monkeys! Red Hot Chilli Peppers!” Kevin tells his ramshackle collection of old fogies. They probably were new and now when the dust was blown off of Julie Kincade’s dilapidated screenplay. To further show how hip this movie is to the young mindset of its lead character, there are musical sequences set to Amii Stewart’s “Knock on Wood” and Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park”.

There’s really no excuse for how this screenplay got so far. The press screening I was at featured howls of laughter, which says a lot from a group that is usually quite reserved. My personal favourite – it’s A Heartbeat Away’s own “I definitely have breast cancer” moment – was when Lucas’ artistic Mandy says she’s leaving town and “going to Sydney to study law”, as if she was just going to hop on a train, knock on the front door of a university and say “I’M HERE TO STUDY LAW! EDUCATE ME!” It’s truly some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in a very long time, but it’s actually quite insulting that this gets made and somehow released through a major distributor when there are plenty of talented writers and filmmakers out there who can’t catch a break. Never mind, those involved – behind the camera, at least – will surely never set foot on a film set again and, for that, we can all be grateful. F

Review: Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
Dir. Ace Hannah
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 85mins

To coin a phrase as sung by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville (because, since we’re talking about a movie called Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, why not?); I don’t know much, but I know that if you want to see Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus then you should see it with a large crowd made up on cult movie boffins who delight in watching the weird and the appalling projected on big cinema screens surrounded by other bad movie fans. Much like The Room, a Melbourne cult cinema mainstay, this latest entry in Cinema Nova’s Cult Cravings is designed to be viewed with many people, all of whom are hootin’ and hollerin’ and having a good time.

There’s really not much to say on the film, to be perfectly honest. Everything you can possible hope to know about the movie is right there in the title. I could reel off a list of moments that had me in various stages of laught0er – from mild giggles to full on cackles – but to read about the hilarious extras, the dodgy CGI or the tacky scenes of “sexy science” just isn’t as fun as seeing it for yourself as you wave your “Team Shark!” or “Team Octopus!” flags (yes, actual flags) and cheer when your chosen defender gets the upper hand. Or, you can ditch either of them and go for “Team Seagull”, “Team Gun-Toting Security Guard”, “Team Pelican” or any other team you care to create out of the various throwaway establishment shots that director Ace Hannah includes.


Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus doesn’t have the fascinating back-story, instant rewatchability and all-round bizarre eye-popping badness of The Room, nor was it ever aiming for anything within proximity to quality, but what it has in its favour is a gleeful sensibility that is awakened by being watched with a large group of likeminded cinemagoers. I can’t attest to how it plays on DVD in your own home, but there’s something quite comical about settling down in a plush cinema seat after a few beers to watch a movie in which, very literally, a mega shark and a giant octopus battle it out mano-a-mano. To end this review, let’s take some wise words from Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus’ own leading lady, 1980s pop star Debbie Gibson, and note that the future only belongs to the future itself and the future is Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Well, for 85 brief minutes it is, anyway. Z-

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus will screen as a part of Cinema Nova's Cult Craving sessions, here in Melbourne, from Boxing Day!

Review: The Room

The Room
Dir. Tommy Wiseau
Year: 2003
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 99mins

Yesterday I had what I think I can say was the greatest cinematic experience of my life. Granted, I’ve only been alive for a quarter of a century and have made the cinema my second home for only half of that time, but last night was without a doubt a truly mind-blowing experience that I will not forget any time soon. I don’t think it’s making too much of a leap to say that Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is anything short of one of the very worst movies ever made in the history of cinema, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t make for one hell of a cinema going treat.

The Room follows the love triangle between three people who are also best friends and all live in the same apartment complex. It’s like Friends, but without the pretty hair and the sarcastic comebacks and “Smelly Cat”. Not to put too fine a point on it, but The Room is trash. Garbage, pure and simple. Horrendously written, acted even worse, shamelessly narcissistic and flat out ugly, and yet it is these very qualities that makes paying for a ticket and witnessing it all the more entertaining.


Last night I did indeed have the pleasure of attending a special advance preview screening – seven years after its release in the US I should add, which says a lot – of The Room before it begins an exclusive limited late-night run on Saturday nights throughout February at the Cinema Nova in Carlton. We had the added extra of having a Tommy Wiseau fan club in the audience, which certainly helped the crowd relax enough to openly mock this disastrous movie. I can’t speak for everyone, but the majority of the audience was certainly getting into the spirit of the event and only the dullest fuddy-duddy could sit there without laughing at the events transpiring on screen.

All part of the “event” of seeing The Room on the big screen was there. Partaking in cult rituals such as throwing spoons at the screen whenever a piece of spoon-related artwork appears, yelling “CANCER!” whenever the cancer-stricken (yet only once mentioned and in a hilarious nonchalant manner) mother appears on screen, chanting during panning shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and cheering when it reaches the other end (or expressing vocal disappointment when it does not), openly expressing one’s outright disgust at the many sex scenes, openly pointing out continuity flaws (a character is played by two completely different actors), bizarre lapses in logic (the engaged lead character never say the word “fiancé”, only “future wife” or “future husband”!?), strange nonsequitors (the aforementioned cancer, or the drug debt that the mildly-retarded Denny character finds himself in) or just howling with laughter at the sheer badness of the movie’s structure, special effects and original songs.


By the end of the 100 minutes that The Room somehow takes to tell its ridiculous story my voice was hoarse, tears had formed in my eyes many times and I had run out of plastic spoons less than half of the way through. John "Outland Institute" Richard and I had a riot. Openly bantering between one another, normally scornful, but here it just adds to the experience. Wanting to hear what other people are saying is part of the fun, realising that you noticed the same strange quirk as others - what was with all those GIANT candles?

The Room is not a movie you can sit down and watch by yourself on DVD. If you don't have the chance to witness it in all of its glory on a cinema screen then gather some friends, pop open a few (or ten) beers and let the experience be had. I can only hope that someday I get to watch movies like Showgirls or Jack Frost on the big screen with an equally appreciative audience. Nothing can quite replicate the experience of The Room, it's truly one-of-a-kind. As a film? F! As a cinema-going experience? A+

I would just like to add that The Room is a perfect example of my argument that you can't create a cult movie. A cult movie needs to be organic and grow out of a filmmaker legitimately thinking they are making a good movie. The Room didn't start out as a cinematic punching bag, but that's how it ended up. However, I can guarantee that there was even the slightest hint of Wiseau or his cast being in on the joke that it wouldn't be funny.