"Cinema Papers" review, puiblished in Cinema Papers (Sydney), issue 132, in May 2000.
RETURN TO ARTICLE LAYOUT HERE
What Sample People is trying to say to the world is ultimately as confused as its cardboard characters. It wants to be cutting edge, the modern face of Australian cinema, it wants to be beautiful, ugly, a comedy, a gritty drama, everything. But it ends up not being much of anything at all. The elements which are supposed to shock or impress don't quite do the job. It's all too overwrought. "It's a violent city," characters keep saying, urging us to believe this tale takes place on "a magic day". In the meanwhile, here, Look, at some more shades of ultra-viotet and infra-red. And watch out for the slapstick: Whack! Bang! As funny as an iron bar over the head. Even Sample People's setting is confused. The background is Sydney's inner-city drug-infested underground dance scene. But projected on to it are mostly two-dimensional, near-cartoon figures that behave like they've just walked in off the history pages of Australian TV soap, no matter how many drugs they're taking. The music doesn't fit either. The decision to record and remix classic Australian songs in a pseudo club style doesn't come off, despite some interesting individual recordings (Kiley Gaffney doing Split Enz's One Step Ahead and The Mavis's reviving Jim Keays' bizarre Boy From The Stars). The soundtrack sounds more suited to a blue-light disco than a hardcore modern nightclub. So thank God for Ben Mendelsohn. His camped-up, mischievous John easily steals the show. Not that the heavity-tattooed Kylie Minogue (Jess, the local gangster's in-house vixen) doesn't try her damnedest. But Kylie was probably too busy trying to took sultry in a drug-fucked way to notice she doesn't get many lines for a credits -topper (Lines of dialogue, that is). Incidentally, even though they don't appear on screen together at any point, this is the first time Mendelsohn and Minogue have worked together since The Henderson Kids (Channel 10) and Fame And Misfortune mini-series in 1985. The rest of the ensemble of Sample People is a mis-match of stereotypes. There�s speeders, trippers, wankers, Westies, roughs, dream boys, dream girls. There's even a local mystic: Phil (played by Ghandi Macintyre), the Indian proprietor of the kebab shop. He throws around proverbs such as: "Decide what to serve and serve it well." And: "You know, Len, milk is a real mover. The customer will come for the milk but, seeing other products, will also leave with the fizzy pop." Much Like Apu from the Kwik-E-Mart in The Simpsons, no? Still, some of the actors manage to make something out of not-a-lot. Journeyman actor David Field plays it straight and tough as the baddie TT (although he could have done without his character specifically verbalising the fact that he's simply a pastiche of every Robert De Niro and Al Pacino gangster that's beaten him to the big screen). While youngsters Joel Edgerton (Sam) and Paula Arundell (Cleo) are the most natural and believable things in the mash. In the end, it all comes out feeling a lot like Starstruck (d. Armstrong 1982) despite the producers obviously aiming at Pulp Fiction (d. Tarantino 1994). If there's a "Drugs are bad" message in there - if that's what Sample People is saying - then it sort of gets lost in the "Drugs are cool" images which make up much of the film. Now, discussions about explicit drug-use in cinema are about as boring as a psychedelic-scene-through-the-eyes-of-a-tripper (we get one of those here too), but surely no pusher in the world is going to be sad to see Kylie Minogue with a note jammed (literally) up her nose. Your business doesn't get that sort of free advertising every day. The writers and producers of Sample People obviously had too many influences pushing and pulling at their thoughts white conceptualising this project. Maybe they should have listened to the character that shouts Out: "You're not in LA, bro." If their idea was to make the audience laugh nervously, sweat as much as the actors (all except a couple of the characters are constantly covered in a slight sheen of sweat for one reason or another), well then, where was the tension? It's just so bloody obvious so far out how all the story's subplots would eventually meet up. So you sit there waiting for Sample People to surprise you. And it never does.
