AustLit

'A continual thread of thoughtful reflection that connects the suburbs to Australian national identity. It harks back, in particular, to a discursive moment just after the second world war, when suburbia as a demographic reality and set of lifestyle choices sprawled into new territory. The 1950s was ‘the suburban moment’, a moment which was seen as the owl of Minerva flew at dusk, when writers like Donald Horne and Robyn Boyd expressed a mood of intellectual despair a decade later, and took evident pleasure in negating ‘the common man’. They, and others, were reflecting on the sudden material changes, on how the car, television, bungalow became the norm, when Australia lost something fundamental in the dialectic of its suburbanisation.' (Introduction)

'Mention the modern-day Australian film industry and you'll likely elicit a groan as frames of the same actors performing cliché roles, safe plotlines and token ideology flick through the mind with stop motion predictability.' (Introduction)

'It’s filled with racial stereotypes, dumb dialogue and inept subplots, and few things about Stephen Amis’s film make sense.'