The Pinkies Are Back: Film Review

Director: Lisa Burd

A typical underdog story with an uplifting ethos, Lisa Burd's The Pinkies Are Back does little to challenge the sports documentary form.

However, with an OST of stirring uplifting music, and a running thread of camaraderie, the film's raison d'etre is clearly one of inspiration with a few elements of perspiration thrown in.

Focussing on the Auckland-based dragon boating group, The Pink Dragons, Burd's film starts with the image of two women having a personal boxing class and ends up with a row of beaming faces, and a very poignant and affecting image of pink roses being scattered in solidarity on the water.

In between, it's the usual tale of Kiwi pluck and good humour as a bunch of new women are recruited to the cause of getting the Dragon boat group back out on the water.

From coach Sooupu Perese, who first didn't want to get close to the women by knowing their names for obvious reasons, to the team captain Annemarie Stevens,it's a story of pluck and heart, mixed together with a large dollop of earnestness.

In truth, Burd does little to stir the pot, or present the story in a new and different way.

Footage of dragon boat events are mixed with inspiring music under, rather than reinventing the format and the typical underdog sporting story.

But The Pinkies Are Back is blessed with an honesty that's engaging and a geniality that is relatively contagious if you're open-hearted and generous.

Stories of the cancer and largely the women sit in the background, rather than being milked to the front, but Burd wisely chops some of the best bits of the talking heads to thread together a none-too-challenging narrative.

The Pinkies are Back works best when it bathes in a day-to-day reality (the only real tension comes from a male reaction to if the ladies can use his portaloo), but it's inherently Kiwi in its outlook and is less about the condition of cancer, and more about the condition of friendships.

More heartwarming than anything, The Pinkies Are Back follows a relatively simple formula for maximum crowd-pleasing effect.