The big screen debut of the popular Australian TV comedy about the lives of the titular mother and daughter. While the TV series is a clever documentary style, satire of Australian lower-middle class suburban life, Kath & Kimderella abandons this is a straight fantasy, rom-com adventure with the pair traveling to the fictional micronation of Papilloma.
Released 7 years after the show was cancelled, the show still had a strong following via reruns, so a film adaptation still made sense in 2012. And like most TV movies, Kath & Kimderella faced the dilemma: do you make a 2 hour episode or place these characters in a new situation? Kath & Kimderella chose the latter.
But here's the thing - on the TV show, Kath and Kim were extraordinary characters in a very ordinary situation. That's what worked. They were over-the-top caricatures of Aussie outer-suburbanites in situations that most of us could relate too. Kath & Kimderella makes the fatal error that a lot of board TV comedies do when they go to the big screen and put their extraordinary characters in extraordinary situations - meaning the audience has nothing to connect to.
Australian comedy legends Turner, Riley and Szubanski fail to transport the original show's charm and humour to this big screen fantasy rom-com. The jokes don't land, the script is lazy, the film is too cheap looking justify its location and fairy tale theme and the overall end result is a boring, weak and unfunny pantomime that's an endurance test to sit through and a sad end to a great show.
Released 7 years after the show was cancelled, the show still had a strong following via reruns, so a film adaptation still made sense in 2012. And like most TV movies, Kath & Kimderella faced the dilemma: do you make a 2 hour episode or place these characters in a new situation? Kath & Kimderella chose the latter.
But here's the thing - on the TV show, Kath and Kim were extraordinary characters in a very ordinary situation. That's what worked. They were over-the-top caricatures of Aussie outer-suburbanites in situations that most of us could relate too. Kath & Kimderella makes the fatal error that a lot of board TV comedies do when they go to the big screen and put their extraordinary characters in extraordinary situations - meaning the audience has nothing to connect to.
Australian comedy legends Turner, Riley and Szubanski fail to transport the original show's charm and humour to this big screen fantasy rom-com. The jokes don't land, the script is lazy, the film is too cheap looking justify its location and fairy tale theme and the overall end result is a boring, weak and unfunny pantomime that's an endurance test to sit through and a sad end to a great show.