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A Man's Gotta Do

2004, Movie, NR, 100 mins

A Man's Gotta Do: Review

MAN'S GOTTA DO, A
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With all the sit-com complications surrounding the members of a dysfunctional but loving family, Australian writer/producer/director Chris Kennedy's amusing comedy feels more like a 90-minute pilot for a TV series than a feature film. The head of the Burke family seat — a brand-new model home just off a four-lane motorway in sunny New South Wales — is the growling but lovable Eddy Burke (John Howard), husband of restless Yvonne (LOVE SERENADE's Rebecca Frith) and father of pretty, 22-year-old Chantelle (Alyssa McClelland), who's about to escape from under Eddy's thumb by marrying Rudi (Manuel Terron), the love of her life. Officially a fisherman with his own trawler, Eddy is actually the guy you call when you need a business burned down, a welsher pressured into paying or other services too criminal to mention. Neither Yvonne nor Chantelle knows anything about Eddy's sideline; when his regular partner-in-crime, Nigel (Rowan Jackson) is laid up with two broken legs, Eddy simply explains the sudden appearance of Dominic (Gyton Grantley), a nice lad with no real stomach for rough stuff, as another new hire for the trawler. Besides, both women are too preoccupied to notice anything unusual about the family business. After consulting with her friend Tina (Helen Thomson), Yvonne has decided the cure for her feelings of irrelevancy is a baby. Chantelle, meanwhile, is beside herself with heartache when Rudi and his folks not only fail to show up for the all-important meet-the-in-laws lunch, but appear to have fallen off the face of the earth altogether. Chantelle resigns herself to the sad fact that she's been dumped, until so-called friend Delores (Amie McKenna) clues her in to what Eddy really does for a living, and Chantelle begins to suspect her father may have had a hand in Rudi's disappearance. As she digs around in the unfinished backyard for traces of her fiancé, Eddy asks Dominic to help him better understand his daughter by reading Chantelle's diary. No sooner is one subplot — a randy plumber's (Rohan Nicol) exploits, a rash of pregnancies, a vasectomy — resolved than another crops up in its place. It's a bit like The Sopranos meets All in the Family Down Under, but the film's lighthearted tone can't absorb the fact of Eddy's violence and, unlike Tony Soprano, his character never really jibes. Once we see him instructing the gentle Dominic in the delicate art of clipping off a whimpering victim's toe with a bolt cutter, it's hard to see him as anything but a sadistic thug. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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