Take Away

The Ocker comedy is alive and well in the hands of  television's Full Frontal team members director Marc Gracie directing and writers Dave O’Neil and Mark O’Toole. No effort is spared in ensuring that the lowest common denominator is pandered to with a rudimentary David and Goliath scenario that we have seen so many times before and supposedly endearingly dumb-ass characters doing supposedly endearingly dumb-ass things.

Vince Colosimo and Stephen Curry play Tony Stilano and Trevor Spackney, two guys who both run takeaway shops two doors apart in a small suburban street in a small regional NSW town. Tony is obsessively tidy and ambitious, Trev an Ocker slob. They are continually sledging each other but rivalry is set aside when multinational food giant Burgies decides to build a fast food outlet next door to their shops.

Both Colosimo and Curry (who starred in the highwater instance of this kind of thing, The Castle) are both good in their parts with Colosimo in particular a winner as the over-serious Tony but Rose Byrne, although attractive eye candy, is all wrong in the part and pulls face in lieu of having anything of value to contribute whilst what Nathan Phillips does barely deserves the description of acting. There are occasional moments when the clouds of lameness part and a shaft of humour appear but overall Take Away is terminally prosaic stuff.

 

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