Danny Deckchair

Having written a rental review for this film previously, you’ll forgive me if I just include some of that...

It’s rough when you’re one type of person and your partner is some very different type. This is Danny’s dilemma with his girlfriend Trudy. He is but a humble concrete man, mixing it for his builder mates. She is a hot real estate agent working her way up through the ranks. When a chance to sell sports newsreader Sandy Upman a home comes along, she takes it instead of going on their holiday together. As she and Danny become ever-distant from each other and after a huge fight, Danny decides to go on holiday alone. Unfortunately, they’ve planned a barbeque and Danny stays, but with a notion of tying helium balloons to a deckchair to see if it’ll fly.

It does.

Danny ends up lost somewhere north of Sydney in the countryside, landing heavily in Glenda’s backyard. In Clarence, the small country town nearby, he becomes somewhat of a local celebrity and can finally be himself and try some new ideas. The townspeople all fall in love with him, but elsewhere there are people still searching for him and it’s a matter of time until he is discovered.

"I’m a traffic cop mate, so watch it!"

This is a simple film with a very poignant message about the importance of the individual and living your life rather than becoming part of the machine. Performances from Rhys Ifans (with an uncannily familiar Australian accent) and Miranda Otto are great with a genuine chemistry between the two that helps the film along immeasurably. While the supporting cast do a great job (and have fun hamming it up a lot of the time) the film does belong to these two.

The video quality here is almost faultless, with only some mild grain at times (particularly outdoor night shots) ruining a perfect transfer. However, this doesn’t really affect us much and will most likely go unnoticed by most. There are no artefacts, at least that I could detect, and the picture quality is quite sharp. Shadow detail fluctuates only once or twice, usually yielding details fairly well. Otherwise, a beautiful clean picture, which we should expect from a film released earlier this year. The transfer is no different from the earlier rental release, but for the extras, which I’ll get to in due time.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround does a great job with the dialogue, though it has little else to do surround-wise throughout. Dialogue is all fairly clear, although there seem to be some later dubs that don’t synch with mouth movement entirely, though this is only apparent a couple of times. This was similar in the rental release a while back. Sound effects are pretty much invisible, though some crowd scenes in the surrounds are good, as is the short fireworks scene. The subwoofer gets to add some depth to the motorbike shots and the above noted fireworks scenes but stands around immobile most of the time.

Extras in the rental version were non-existent, but here we get ourselves a nice bunch of animated menus and a Making Of featurette which is sorta standard but an interesting reflection on the process. One of the interviewees though, the co-producer Lizzie Bryant, sounds like she’s reading from cue cards (and not very well). Plenty of film footage (unenhanced) throughout makes the featurette resemble every other featurette of its sort made for promotional purposes. Still, worth a look.

Oh, I almost forgot. Miranda Otto and Rhys Ifans have worked together before in a little known film called Human Nature penned by the amazing Charlie Kaufman, yet there is no mention of this anywhere. I thought this strange because they are both interviewed about the other.

Overall this is a fun film and while not overly challenging, is in fact a sweet romance and a warm story about finding your place in the scheme of things. Performances are great, the location is beautiful and the photography is subtle in telling the differences between city and country. I must say I expected a little more on the retail release by way of extras, but the featurette will have to do. Worth checking out for anyone after a light romantic comedy.