DANNY DECKCHAIR (MOVIE REVIEW)

Film: Danny Deckchair

Director: Jeff Balsmeyer

Featuring: Rhy Ifans, Mirando Otto, Justin Clarke, Rhys Muldoon

Rating: 6/10

At some point in our lives, almost everyone has an urge to move away from our predictable routines and duties and start over somewhere else. Danny Deckchair explores this idea with some interesting twists, although not that fascinating. Director-writer Jeff Balsmeyer is the innovative force behind this Australian romantic comedy.

Danny Morgan (Rhys Ifans) is an easily distracted, Sydney construction worker and lives with his self-centered, bossy girlfriend Trudy (Justine Clarke) who aspires for more affluent lifestyle and takes Danny for granted. He gets bored easily, and when he is bored, he hatches strange schemes, like when he made a slingshot big enough to catapult a full-grown person.  He looks forward to camping with Trudy. However, she is trying to close a real estate deal with Sandy Upman (Rhys Muldoon), a popular TV sports reporter. Trudy forces Danny to suspend the vacation. He was angry and even more berserk when he sports Trudy in a car with upman, revealing a major plot line.

Danny, who finds it hard to express his emotions, comes up with a clever way to convey his feeling of betrayal. It is clear to him that Trudy considers him a loser who is incapable of giving her what she wants. At the barbecue at his home with friends and neighbors, Danny and his friends fill balloon with helium, attach them to a deckchair into the summer sky. He goes up the sky and quickly disappears from sight. Trudy and his friend as well as the whole country through media coverage are throb with speculation and worry about what becomes of him, revealing a major plot development.

He lands in a tree owned by Glenda Lake (Miranda Otto), a local cop with no friend in a small town called Clarence.  However in Clarence, everyone is at least friendly whether, they are actually friends or not. For Danny being in the new town is like starting a new life, one where his ideas are respected and treat him with neighborliness. He found new love as well. Embraced by the town people of Clarence, where his identity remains a mystery, Danny emerges from his comfort zone and become a local hero, revealing plot development. He never bothers to go home, and since the locals are unable to recognize him because the TV news for some reason never shows a recent photo of him.  This is where the screen play becomes a bit incomplete because the TV news failed to include the new photographs of the missing man.

Back in Sydney, Trudy turn Danny’s disappearance into an opportunity to become someone, thereby shifting our attention from Danny’s disappearance.

One problem with Danny Deckchair is that Balsmeyer does not bring anything new to the formula.  The best scenes in the movie are those involving Danny and Glenda, who make a pleasant romantic couple. Attractive as well are the scenes of Danny floating high in the sky.

Balsmeyer is an experienced and wonderful story teller with some attention grabbing ideas; he’s just not sure what to do with them.

Like many present Australian movies. Danny Deckchair is a comedy with a script that needed more work, more laughs and importantly, a fresher and more unique approach to the material.