Menkoff Method, The

Synopsis: David Cork (Lachlan Woods) is a lowly data processor slaving away in the cubicle wasteland of Endo Bank’s Data Processing Centre.But his real passion is drawing manga and he dreams of Foxy Chaos, a female superhero created by the great manga artist, Takuya Fujimoro (Ferdinand Hoang). When Endo Bank’s Chair of the Board, Clive Struthers (Robert Taylor) is deposed under a cloud, his successor Guy Curry (David Whitely) brings in a sinister new Human Resources Manager, the mysterious Russian, Max Menkoff (Noah Taylor). With the aid of his henchman and henchwoman, Karpov (Malcom Kennard) and Svetlana (Olga Makeeva) Menkhoff has big plans for plundering the bank’s insurance scheme and no worker is safe from his unorthodox method. Only David and the brilliant and determined Ruby Jackson from HQ (Jessica Clarke) have any hope of untangling Mankoff’s web of corporate intrigue, murder and chaos before all his workmates are turned into office zombies.

The Menkoff Method is a very silly film but not in a good way.The overly convoluted plot certainly tries to live up to its tag line of being ‘part spy movie, part anime, part office comedy’ but ends up falling over itself in a jumble of ideas and situations that never really coalesce. It’s a shame, because the cast of excellent Australian actors which also includes Catherine McClements, John Brumpton, Brett Cousins, Natasha Herbert, Damian Hill and Richard Piper, do their best with a scatty screenplay that is far too light on logic, narrative or characterisation. What we’re left with is a string of derivative, two dimensional characters who might as well be in a series of comedy sketches.

On the plus side, it’s got a Paul Grabowsky soundtrack (which is always a good thing) and some terrific animated Foxy Chaos sequences by Vikki Ong. But without a coherent throughline, the overall effect is a story that falls disappointingly flat.

David Parker’s career has had its highs and lows. Together with wife Nadia Tass as director, he wrote and co-produced the 1986 classic Malcolm and the charming 1989 comedy, The Big Steal (for which he won the Best Screenplay AFI Award) but by the same token they were also responsible for the disappointing 1988 film Rikky and Pete and the equally disappointing Amy (1998).  His previous two outings as director included the inspired lunacy of Hercules Returns (1993) and the romantic comedy, Diana and Me (1997), the reception of which was scuttled by the real life death of Princess Diana.

Here, Parker seems to be looking for the kind of whacky comedy he found with Hercules Returns (although the credit there really goes to the Double Take team) but first time feature screenwriter Zac Gillam doesn’t provide him with enough structure or story to support the weight of the silliness. Yes, it has its moments, and Woods and Clarke work well together to bring a nice if predictable touch of romance to the story but Noah Taylor’s considerable talents are wasted and his outrageous Russian accent might be funny but it’s for the wrong reason.

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