A bit of a mixer that ended up muddled.

Julian Dennison is really your main attraction in this.  Or kiwi-boy-Rebel-Wilson as you might think of him.  He’s funny enough, it’s true.  The whole film is funny enough.  I laughed a fair bit.  It’s a comedy-drama I guess.

I’d say the biggest trouble here is it’s just too realistic.  There’s just too much going on in the life of Josh Waaka (Dennison).  And so by the end there are all these narative threads lying dead and unresolved.  Maybe they meant to make it about how there’s only one thing that’s important?  And maybe he made that choice?  But I felt more let down and curious about everything I didn’t see.

There’s a lot of walking the streets of Dunnedin delivering junk mail and papers.  The tragedy of the brother who was in the All Blacks but now relegated to being sad, injured and coaching.  Josh trying to make up for all this.  A tragedy of a dead Dad and a difficult inter-racial love.

School is partly about the footy team.  And partly Dead Poets Society (1989) with Rhys Darby on the case as a kiwi Robin Williams.  Then there’s the ever-omnipresent cultural implications around Josh’s Maori background and discovering his own self. And the girls who drag him along.

Then there’s the protest movement against the Springboks, the South African team.  Because their country had brought in apartheid and obviously that’s a bad thing and a lot of New Zealanders didn’t want them touring on NZ soil.  Josh gets caught up in that too.

So by the end it becomes a somewhat murky question of what is the resolution this story needs?  A protest?  Winning a rugby match?  Revenge on the school racists?  Acceptance into NIDA?  A girlfriend?  A friendship?  A good old haka?

I thought it was a good film, but towards the end I lost direction and steam.

J* gives it 3 stars.

PS.  I think I would have been happier with a haka.