> Predicament
3 stars (out of 5)
Director: Jason Stutter
Cast: Hayden Frost, Heath Franklin, Jemaine Clement, Tim Finn, Edward Newborn, Chad Mills, Rose McIver
Rating: (M)
Forget your Austens and your Tolstoys. I defy anyone to come up with a better opening sentence to a novel than: "The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut".
That is the opening to The Scarecrow, by Ronald Hugh Morrieson, a great book that was turned into an equally great movie.
That one sentence is enough to know why he is regarded as the king of Kiwi Gothic but what is often overlooked is that he is also screamingly funny.
This adaptation of an earlier novel, Predicament (Rialto), gets the Gothic part right but never manages to adequately mine the comic potential.
Cedric (Hayden Frost) is moping at home during the Christmas holidays when he is taken up by Merv (Heath Franklin), a big bouncy boy a few years older.
Merv soon settles himself into Cedric's home and entangles him in a blackmailing scheme with Merv's old friend Spook (Jemaine Clement).
Cedric is not cut out for a life of crime but trying to extract himself brings out a toughness and rat cunning that Merv and the audience never suspected was there.
Predicament takes a long time to get us to feel anything for the characters. Cedric is the nominal hero but his eagerness to give blackmailing a whirl makes him hard to warm to.
Eventually the story does get moving but it is hard to avoid the feeling that Morrieson's talents could have been better served.
Best thing: There is so much visual texture layered in all of the settings you can lose yourself in the look of the thing.
Worst thing: All too often potentially great comic sequences are missed by poor pacing.
See it with: Any paid-up members of the Jemaine-Clement-has-sexy-lips fan club. His performance as the creepy Spook should stop them going on about him for a couple of days at least.
- Christine Powley
