Boronia Boys

Writer-director Timothy Spanos does for the outer eastern Melbourne suburb of Boronia what Borat (2009) did for Khazakstan in this comedy about a pair of bogans, Kane (Cameron Nugent) and Darren (Tim Burns) who make a living picking up items from hard rubbish collections and selling them at trash and treasure markets.

Clearly Spanos knows his subject matter well (he grew up in the neighbouring suburb of Ferntree Gully) and has a good deal of affection for its clueless dagginess, much as it pokes fun at the same. In this respect it belongs with The Castle (1997) and the teleseries Kath & Kim although it lacks the genial nature of those classics, sometimes feeling too forced and occasionally falling back on crudity instead of maintaining the dry irony necessary to make this kind of film catch fire. This is evident in the contrast between the way in which the lads and their girlfriends. Deb (Desirée Smith) and Caz (Maxine Klibingaitis), are handled, Spanos giving the latter an everydayness and thus more credibility than the sometimes exaggerated parts of Kane and Darren. Both Nugent and Burns are, however good in the roles whilst former Prisoner star, Elspeth Ballantyne, plays Kane’s mother (many of the cast form an ensemble of actors that Spanos has worked with on his four films to date).

Shot on a very low budget ($40,000) with minimal post-production the film could have done with some tighter editing to remove reiterative shots and for my money the latter section of the film mistakenly changes the pace and spirit of the movie although perhaps this was done to set up for a sequel Boronia Backpackers (2011) which I have not seen.

 

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