Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

bob_bear Six laughs, Six. I counted them. Not so good for a comedy lasting 90mins +, is it? The reviews I'd read for this movie on IMDb were overwhelmingly positive. It's why I bought it. Had never heard of it except that it was referenced as the inspiration for "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" but better, it was claimed, and being a fan of Australian cinema... Well, I spent the first three quarters feeling vaguely uncomfortable but in the last quarter the film kind of redeemed itself - kind of. It is, as Paul Hogan points out in one of the many DVD Special Features, neither pro or anti same gender partnerships. It was an unnecessary comment for him to make - but meant, one assumes, to reassure conservative Australians. I'm glad I saw this clip after I watched the film. I was not impressed. It's not a bad film - its heart is sort of in the right place - but it just feels so old hat. A missed opportunity to do something both fun and progressive. A shame really.

zumarrad I actually enjoyed this film up to a point. Sure, it's not great cinema (it's a fun TV movie, I feel) and it does overly draw on stereotypes, but it had some very enjoyable moments.I started to get fed up with the constant flow of stereotypes regarding gay men, but then took into consideration that the characters were two small-town Aussie blokes in their 50s, who try to find out about how to "act gay" from the local hairdresser - a flaming whoopsie who is, in fact, a straight man pretending to be gay so he can safely score other men's wives - and gay porn sites. In short, they don't have any real example of gay men to draw on. That's why their experiences in Sydney annoyed me, because nearly everyone they met in the Sydney gay club was a drag queen or other highly theatrical, femmy kind of gay person. I was hoping they would meet actual gay couples who were, you know, ordinary human beings. So that bit was disappointing. On the other hand a)if those guys were visiting during Mardi Gras then it might not have been an exaggeration and b) it was just an excuse to get Paul Hogan into skin tight foil bike shorts, and hell, he's still looking fairly reasonable! And c) the fact their new friends were so ragingly, stereotypically flamboyant ended up being necessary if the farcical events towards the end (when the Sydney gays arrive for their local do, further problematising their desire to stop pretending to be gay)were to work.The scenes in which Caton and Hoges practice "being gay" were priceless. Ditto the bit where they pretend to be a gay couple for the (clearly perturbed) assessor, Pete Postlethwaite. Why? Because they're so terrible at it and so obviously uncomfortable.Just as it was still looking a bit offensive, though, came the heartwarming cheese. The scam can't be exposed while Pete Postlethwaite is there, because they risk jail. They also don't want to upset their new gay friends, whose support of their "out" life in small-town Australia makes them feel so hypocritical. Caton's daughter has arrived with her new GIRLFRIEND in tow - cue the acceptance! And so Caton does a wonderful speech where, without stating explicitly whether they're a couple or not, he talks about acceptance and about how he loves Hoges. It's vastly better than what they did while being assessed, and it also has a classic response from the other men of their generation in the town. ("I knew they weren't gay. Mateship is a wonderful thing.") All in all, this is no classic but it made me laugh quite a few times.

Mikeonalpha99 If Australian viewers will cast their minds back to the seventies, they may remember The Paul Hogan Show, a variety show in which Paul irreverently played the larrikin host. The twist was that he would make a grand entrance wearing tight fitting black shorts and a rugby top – a caricature of a footballer.In Strange Bedfellows almost thirty years later, he cleverly parodies this costume by dressing up in close hugging spandex shorts and a black figure hugging tank top. Paul is probably having a good old chuckle at himself, and we are too, because there's generally lot of laughs to be had in this irreverent, and funny, but never offensive Australian film.This is the best film that Paul Hogan has made in years. He doesn't over-play it, he's instantly amiable and most of all, he's giving life to a character that fits him like a glove. But kudos should also be given to the talented Michael Caton, who at times, gently steals the movie from beneath Hogan's feet.Hogan plays Vince, a theatre owner in the small Victorian country town of Yackandandah. Vince's wife has recently left him and now he's left with nothing, apart from the single-bed he sleeps on in the projection booth. When he gets a letter from his ex-wife's accountant ordering he pay back years of back taxes, he turns to his best friend Ralph (Michael Caton), the town mechanic, for help.Vince has just read that the current government, in a race for electoral votes, is giving gay couples the same legal rights as married couples including a retrospective tax law that allows them to claim all the usual tax rebates for up to five years. Vince decides the best thing to do is become gay - at least on paper.Ralph is initially hesitant, but once Vince explains to him that it's just form filling bureaucracy, and that no one in the small town need ever know, he decides to help his best friend out. Things seem to be going well, until a letter arrives stating that a representative of the tax office is coming to visit, in order to make sure Vince and Ralf really are a same-sex couple.Vince and Ralf are forced to embark on a crash course in learning how to be gay. Enlisting the help of the local gay hairdresser, (Glynn Nicholas) they learn how to "place a hand on a penguin," wax lyrical over a photograph of Liberace and call each other "she" and "girl." They even take a trip to Sydney where they befriend a group of biker gays and drag queens.When the reserved and seemingly threatening tax inspector (Pete Postlethwaite) is sent to audit their claim, Ralph and Vince must try and convince him that they are a loving homosexual couple in a small town who knows them as anything but. Adding to the shenanigans is Ralf's daughter (Kestie Morassi), who is coming up to stay from Melbourne; she's devoted to Ralf, and has a surprise in store for him.What makes Strange Bedfellows work so well is the amazing script that never condescends to either the urban gay community or the country people of Yackandandah. Judgment is never passed, even though the rural folk might see the gays as "weird," while the gays might view the country people as homophobic. Stereotypes abound, but the tone of the film is such that one cannot take any of them seriously.Paul Hogan as Vince seems to be having a great old time; he's empathetic to the gay community, and seems to be opening his heart to a segment of society that he knows nothing about, while Michael Caton delivers a wonderfully warm character with enough complexity and self-contradiction to be three-dimensional.Detailed, effectively paced, Strange Bedfellows is crammed with characters you'll feel are old mates by the time the credits roll, but best of all, Strange Bedfellows is a terrific plea for tolerance and equality for the gay community, along with a kind of homage to the age old Australian tradition of mateship. Mike Leonard September 05.

Chris Peterson I like a good farce. It's a very simple formula, you wonder why so many films get it wrong. It starts with a small lie... and then a slightly bigger lie to cover the first one, and so on and so on. The secret is to make the underlying situation very serious. In this instance, the threat isn't being "outed" to the township, it's taxation fraud and the potential of being sent to jail that underpins the frantic farceurs.I watched the DVD of 'Strange Bedfellows' tonight with my partner and we both laughed like hyenas throughout. Even though most of the plot twists are obvious, half the pleasure comes from predicting what's going to happen next, and then seeing it actually happen as poor Vince and Ralph are plunged deeper into their charade. Michael Caton is brilliant, and Paul Hogan shines too, a few slightly wooden scenes notwithstanding. The rest of the cast allows anyone who's grown up with Aussie TV to play a quick game of "Ooh, isn't that...?"The tax law reform which sets the plot in motion is very improbable - now moreso than when the film was made just last year - but it's clearly just a mcguffin to get the plot rolling, and it's not worth slamming the film for it.Some people have been saying that the film is full of negative gay stereotypes; since the only part of the film with "real" gays (as opposed to Vince and Ralph's hilariously inept mincing) is set in Oxford St Sydney on a Friday(?) night, it's hardly surprising everyone's all frocked up for a night out. The important lesson here is that once Vince and Ralph sit and talk with them and get to know them, the gay guys are just, well, guys. Which is pretty much the moral of the story. Strip away the glitter and the glam, forget about who does what to whom in the bedroom - if you just stop and look, people are all just people.I loved this - it's the Australian 'In And Out'. More like this, please.