Bad people make good comedy. I don't think you have to identify with the protagonist to enjoy a movie, but if it's a comedy, I'm especially pleased to see the worst of the worst jerks for my enjoyment. There was nothing approachable about Jerry and Joe, the two protagonists of Some Like It Hot, and yet it's easy to argue that that's the best comedy of all time. But you need a balance. Without it, your movie is just a collection of horrible people living in a horrible world. Without tension, comedy doesn't exist. It's muted by existing in a universe that doesn't challenge it. I'm applying my expectations to a world where they're irrelevant. I'm filling in the gaps that the movie should have.
Comedy movies are always a bit of a gamble because of how subjective the material can be. What may be a hilarious feature for one viewer may be a complete miss for another. That's why comedy movies don't tend to be at the top of my watch list. Like many, my taste for comedy is a specific type of humor, and if that's not part of a comedy movie's formula, the humor won't work. That being said, when I stumbled upon Audrey at the SXSW lineup, I couldn't help but be intrigued by its outlandish premise.
Director: Natalie Bailey
Writer: Lou Sanz
Stars: Jackie van Beek, Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, Josephine Blazier
The story centers on Ronnie (Jackie van Beek), who had to give up her dream acting career as a young adult after becoming pregnant with her oldest daughter, Audrey (Josephine Blazier). Since then, Ronnie has developed resentment toward her daughter and longs for the life she once had. On top of that, the suburban mom is in a sexless marriage and has become stuck in a rut. However, when Audrey has a terrible accident and falls into a coma, Ronnie feels free to live her life again, all while consuming Audrey's identity.
Although Audrey is an intentionally over-the-top dark comedy, the movie is a complete failure. Every character is highly unlikable and none of them have any redeeming qualities. I know that's the point, as the film leans into the absurdity of family dysfunction. Still, it's hard to connect with any of the characters and get invested in their story. Plus, each of them makes irrational decisions that are completely unrealistic.
The new Australian comedy Audrey suffers from a lack of understanding of the rules of comedy. It can break them (no rules are set in stone), but to do so effectively, it has to understand them, and I doubt it does. The film follows the severely dysfunctional Lipsick family centered on matriarch Ronnie (Jackie van Beek). The former Logie-winning rising star of Australian cinema, now a forgotten failure planning a comeback and trying to groom her eldest daughter, Audrey (Josephine Blazier), to follow in her footsteps of stardom, to the detriment of her other teenage daughter, Norah (Hannah Diviney), a special needs teen whose parents can't even be bothered to make their house wheelchair accessible. And then there's the father, Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), a sexually frustrated bisexual handyman who's lost control of his family.
The inciting incident occurs when Audrey falls into a coma after a nasty fall, and the entire family finds new life. Ronnie takes his daughter's name to try to boost his career, Cormack begins a torrid affair with a religious pornographer named Bourke (Aaron Fa'aoso), and Norah gets the attention she deserves and gets to explore her sexuality with Audrey's boyfriend, Max (Fraser Anderson).
The idea is inherently funny. A family in which all its members are self-centered jerks to the detriment of others is a fantastic framework. Add in a dose of dark humor that never belittles minorities and feels organic within its universe, and Audrey seemed like it would be a cult hit for the summer. However, there's no balance between the elements. It's not that the Lipsicks are horrible people; everyone is. The Lipsicks don't stand out; They live in the world they deserve, just like everyone else. So the comedy quickly fizzles out when the horrible little details of their lives (like the father constantly forgetting to fix the bathroom door so it's accessible to his wheelchair-bound daughter) mean nothing when the two parents decide to have sex next to the comatose body of their other teenage daughter. The gravity of their behavior only works if we apply our morality to it, but if the rest of their world doesn't, it's a fruitless exercise.
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