tomsview An overseas commentator once said he would rather sit through a Lars Von Trier festival than watch an Australian comedy. Up until the recent "Any Questions for Ben?", and with the exception of "The Castle" and "Babe", I'd say he had a point. In fact, "Strange Planet" could be that Australian comedy he was talking about.Sadly, "Australian comedy" has been problematic (i.e. not funny) for decades. Although "Strange Planet" has pretensions to be a comment on the social mores of young, upper middle class Australians as opposed to a straight-out comedy, the filmmakers surely must have intended it to be funnier than it is.Set in Sydney, the movie is about three women who have been friends at university – Judy, Alice and Sally played by Claudia Karvin, Naomi Watts and Alice Garner – and three men who are starting their careers in the legal profession, Ewan, Joel and Neil played by Tom Long, Aaron Jeffery and Felix Williamson. The two groups do not know each other at the beginning of the film but their lives become enmeshed as the story unfolds. The story takes place over one year. So much is packed into this film that it is surprising that it seems to drag so much. Alarm bells sound early. As Judy and her friends leave a supermarket, Judy's boss, who is obsessed with her, asks her to marry him – on his knees no less. The scene is overplayed for comic potential but none is forthcoming; the whole sequence is contrived and miss-timed."Strange Planet" like many Australian films, comedies or otherwise, is too talky. When the script runs out of things for the characters to say, they read from magazines, books and astrology guides – anything to keep up the flow of verbiage. Much of the character motivation is revealed in sessions with psychoanalysts. Both Neil and Alice are seeing therapists – yet another way to keep the cast talking.The characters, men and women alike, constantly give each other advice. The script is full of pet theories espoused by one or other of the principals. Neil's character in particular has many theories, mostly about women. One of his theories is that one can tell what a woman is like from her handbag – this pertains somewhat to physical attributes and gives an idea of the level of wit in the movie.Everything is so superficial in this film that broken relationships, date rape, suicide attempts, sex scenes and self-discovery, all run together without generating much emotion. Although the underlying problem with "Strange Planet" is that it is a collection of poorly conceived sequences that don't hang together, it is the overall sense of self satisfaction that finally sinks the film for me. "Strange Planet", strange movie.

bob the moo In Australia, New Year finds two different groups of friends, 3 men and 3 women, begin their years in a variety of different ways, however each has ambitions and resolutions relating to their love lives. However, during the course of the following year things don't go quite as they would have foreseen or hoped in most cases.This film relates to the topic that is hardly new ground - that of love and relationships in our modern age. In the same way, the manner in which the film tells it's story will also seem like it's not doing anything new in a new way, for it isn't. The film homage's (or rips off) several recent (at the time) films such as Shallow Grave and Trainspotting for it's visual style as well as other `youf' romantic comedies for it's content (as well as a seemingly pointless venture off into Taxi Driver territory that does nothing but prove the writers once watched Taxi Driver!).However, having said that, it still does manage to be quite entertaining and have it's own rough bit of charm to it. It isn't really very funny at any point but it does manage to be quite realistically downbeat without being totally depressing. If anything this rather bleak view of relationships is quite realistic and refreshingly honest - a shame then that it goes and plumps for a happy ending of sorts which relies on coincidence and the usual unlikely devices of romantic comedies. The characters are not that well drawn but they have enough realism to them to make them recognisable and their problems and experiences also relatable. Having 2 groups of 3 character does overstretch the film somewhat though, and some issues are not really dealt with in any meaningful way (an attempted rape just seems to happen without any follow up for instance), but on the whole it works reasonably well.I'm not sure if the cast are well known in Australia, but I had never seen any of them before (with the exception of Watts and Weaving of course). This helped the characters a bit, as I only knew them as who they were playing. Some of the male actors struggled a bit and it is the three female leads that have the best parts - Watts and Karvan having the meatier characters but Garner being cute, sexy and fun!Overall this film is not original or different from many other films you could see, but it's bleak view of modern relationships is interesting and involving (until it blows it) and the characters were recognisable enough to involve me in the film for the duration.

maritas4 I thought it was a pretty good movie. The acting was good and the story was well told. It's one of those *feel good movies* that you know how it's going to turn out but you want to watch and see how it all ends anyway.

Yossarian- Like a few other Australian entries from 1999, 'Strange Planet' is gorgeously filmed but appallingly scripted and acted. The story sees two sets of three friends (three girls and three guys) who stumble to and from bad relationships. In a nutshell, that's basically the plot. Spanning a year, the film certainly covers a lot of time. And neatly too. Each new month is visually introduced by some stunning time-lapse sequences of Syndey. However, once plot and character development come into swing, then the movie just falls flat on its face. Dialogue feels too sparse and wanna-be offbeat, not to mention being so predictable and underdeveloped that it feels more like a synopsis than dialogue. The 'witty' nihilist-turned-romantic banter about relationships is anything but. The plot likewise feels all too familiar, and the ending comes paradoxically unsurprising and undeveloped, so undeveloped that the last shot (an overhead of the six eating breakfast) feels like an insulting attempt at gratifying the audience. Yet another sad triumph of of style over substance. Try 'The Big Night Out' for similar results.2/5