Rikky And Pete

Husband and wife team, Nadia Tass and David Parker, the latter penning this, followed up their 1986 hit Malcolm with Rikky & Pete, a more-of-the-same-on-a-bigger-budget film that misfires on virtually every front.

Treading a well-worn path into our wide brown land, the story sends misfit inventor, Pete (Stephen Kearney), and his geologist sister, Rikky (Nina Landis), from their well-heeled Melbourne home to Outback Queensland where they get involved in small-time mining and of course encounter the usual array of feisty, off-beat characters.

Where Malcolm had charm and ingenuity, Rikky & Pete comes across as a try-hard effort sorely lacking in either quality. Pete is a rather spoilt post-adolescent to Malcolm's child and comedic set-pieces aside, Parker's script is neither funny (not to mention "appropriating" the famous Peter Cook/Dudley Moore "Art Gallery" sketch) nor credible and his wife's direction does not make it so. Throw in stock players like Bill Hunter, Bruno Lawrence, Peter Cummins and Bruce Spence (endowed with a German accent!) and one has a wearisome effort that is interchangeable with any number of Australian comedies that rely on crudely eccentric characters and hyperbolic situations for their supposed entertainment value.

 

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