Darren 'Dazza'” Cook is the patriarch of a suburban Aussie family specialising in barbecuing, claiming that his ancestor was none other than the famed British explorer, Captain James Cook who introduced the “barbacoa” to Australia. Darren’s partner DIANE secretly wishes he would pull back on their weekly Saturday BBQs in order to spend more quality time with the family. But one Saturday, Dazza accidentally gives his neighbours food poisoning and the local magistrate orders him to attend a food safety course with The Butcher, an infamously demanding Scot. Together they enter an international barbecue competition in order to reclaim Dazza’s reputation. But Dazza must battle egotistical French chef, Andre Mounteblanc to win BBQ glory. The steaks don’t get much higher! (Screen Australia)
'A continual thread of thoughtful reflection that connects the suburbs to Australian national identity. It harks back, in particular, to a discursive moment just after the second world war, when suburbia as a demographic reality and set of lifestyle choices sprawled into new territory. The 1950s was ‘the suburban moment’, a moment which was seen as the owl of Minerva flew at dusk, when writers like Donald Horne and Robyn Boyd expressed a mood of intellectual despair a decade later, and took evident pleasure in negating ‘the common man’. They, and others, were reflecting on the sudden material changes, on how the car, television, bungalow became the norm, when Australia lost something fundamental in the dialectic of its suburbanisation.' (Introduction)
'Mention the modern-day Australian film industry and you'll likely elicit a groan as frames of the same actors performing cliché roles, safe plotlines and token ideology flick through the mind with stop motion predictability.' (Introduction)
'It’s filled with racial stereotypes, dumb dialogue and inept subplots, and few things about Stephen Amis’s film make sense.'
'It’s filled with racial stereotypes, dumb dialogue and inept subplots, and few things about Stephen Amis’s film make sense.'
'Mention the modern-day Australian film industry and you'll likely elicit a groan as frames of the same actors performing cliché roles, safe plotlines and token ideology flick through the mind with stop motion predictability.' (Introduction)
'A continual thread of thoughtful reflection that connects the suburbs to Australian national identity. It harks back, in particular, to a discursive moment just after the second world war, when suburbia as a demographic reality and set of lifestyle choices sprawled into new territory. The 1950s was ‘the suburban moment’, a moment which was seen as the owl of Minerva flew at dusk, when writers like Donald Horne and Robyn Boyd expressed a mood of intellectual despair a decade later, and took evident pleasure in negating ‘the common man’. They, and others, were reflecting on the sudden material changes, on how the car, television, bungalow became the norm, when Australia lost something fundamental in the dialectic of its suburbanisation.' (Introduction)
