Ruben Guthrie

Synopsis: Thirty-something ad-man Ruben Guthrie (Patrick Brammall) lives the high life with his Eastern Bloc model fiancée (Abbey Lee) on Sydney’s North Shore. When he nearly kills himself in a drunken prank she packs her bags and gives him an ultimatum, get sober or she won’t be coming back.

Films based on plays, as this is, usually benefit from their stage life having served to tighten the characterological dynamics and hone the dialogue. Surprisingly, particularly as director Brendan Cowell also wrote the play, this hasn’t happened here. Quite the converse, Ruben Guthrie is marred by wordy soliloquies, exaggerated characterizations and histrionic performances that might have been amusing in a theatre but on screen come across as ludicrously forced.

In his second film (his first was the commendable bushranger tele-movie, The Outlaw Michael Howe) Cowell  seems to be intending to give us a men-behaving-badly comedy in the Judd Apatow manner.  The trouble is the script is not funny and Patrick Brammall who seems to have been cast mainly for his physical resemblance to Cowell (who we know principally as an actor) is no Seth Rogen.  As a comedy the film is largely embarrassing, with support characters such as Alex Dimitriades’ bitchily gay best mate (who from what I could tell has two male appendages) and Brenton Thwaites’ advertising wunderkind, who is a kind of McLovin’ on crack cocaine, being simply excruciating.  At the other end of the spectrum is the Korean dishwasher (Elly Oh) with whom Ruben’s swank restaurant-owning father (Jack Thompson) takes up briefly, only to return to his similarly booze-loving wife (Robyn Nevin) because he’s dying of prostate cancer.  Her sole function is to bring Ruben a glass of water. In terms of ethnic caricature Abbey Lee’s “titless” Czech model isn’t a whole lot better. The only character with much credibility or interest value is Harriet Dyer’s Virginia, a reformed alcoholic with whom Ruben takes up while his girlfriend is away, but her role just fizzles out.

Ruben Guthrie is not, however, a straight comedy. Cowell apparently wants to say something serious about alcoholism and related psychological and socio-cultural issues. Indeed a scene late in the film in which a relapsed Ruben returns to the film’s opening scene to the strains of a song “Halfway To Heaven” by Sarah Blasko, who wrote the film’s score, is the film's most (perhaps its only) effective moment. The trouble is that as a critique of the vacuity of the advertising industry/corporate culture and our  “alcoholic country” Cowell does not step outside the well-heeled world of lifestyle choices that Ruben inhabits.  Thus, even after he has apparently seen the light, we farewell him as he flies first class to re-connect with his girlfriend, a glass of champers temptingly placed before him.

Periodically, and for no apparent reason, characters intone the name "Ruben Guthrie" as if he were some kind of extraordinary presence. Indeed one of Ruben’s self-help friends describes him as having enough personality for 25 guys. On the evidence here however we’d have to say that Ruben Guthrie is pretty ordinary.

 

 

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