Spit: Movie Review

Cast: David Wenham, Arlo Green, Gary Sweet
Director: Jonathan Teplitzky

Very much a broad Australian comedy aimed at a generation familiar with David Wenham's Johnny Spit Piteri, this latest feels like a throwback in many ways - but benefits greatly from an audience not necessarily needing to know who Spit is.

With a ginger mullet, drain pipe jeans and an elongated gait, small-time ex-criminal Spit heads back to Australia after 20 years on the run abroad. But being busted on a false passport, Spit is thrust into an immigration detention centre.

Suddenly, a whole heap of enemies from his past are on his back and out to get revenge.

There's pleasingly nostalgic vibe to Spit.

It may not win any awards for subtlety or indeed cleverly developed plot - but that's not really what Teplitzky is setting out to achieve here.

Wenham proves to be particularly game, injecting his Spit with a kind of raffish, weasely Ron from Harry Potter look that's crossed with the sneering edges of Rhys Ifans. He's blessed in the physical comedy demands of the role and also the dexterity of the wordplay the script desires.

There's a wonderfully Morecambe and Wise-esque sequence in a courtroom that feels like the best British writers have executed, and thanks to the timing and build-up, it pays off beautifully hitting all the required beats with ease. Equally scenes inside the detention centre feel like they could have been ripped from BBC sitcom Porridge.

As mentioned, Tepltizky peppers enough of the movie with background from Gettin' Square from 2003 to allow audiences to be in on the action and also the jokes. But he also manages to balance the careful line perfectly.

If there's to be one criticism of Spit, it perhaps saddles its detention centre refugees with one-note characterisation with the exception of Arlo Green's Jihad. While most of them exist to be simply Australianised by Spit giving them true blue Aussie nicknames, Green imbues his character and story arc with a great more subtlety and heart than the script demands - and it proves to be perfectly what's needed.

Spit releases in New Zealand cinemas on March 6.