There is something wrong with the New Zealand Film Commission. Something very wrong. The script for this film is appalling, the dialog drags, the plot meanders through a myriad of clichéd situations - physical and meta-physical - and flounders on the inevitable disaster that is suggested from the first words.... "Once upon a time...." Keith Hill wanted to suggest the story as a fairy tale, all very good, but why would you automatically use the most clichéd device to imply this? All it signals to your viewer is that the film's production lacked vision, right from the very moment the write put pen to paper. This is why i wonder about the NZ Film Commission. Can't they see this? Its written on the page in front of them: as soon as anyone opens the script there it is in plain sight, words that suggest boldly and succinctly, "DO NOT READ ME - I AM VISIONLESS AND DULL." But that seems to be the desire of the Film Comm, the production of dull and stupid films that nobody particularly wants to watch as they are either pushed far to far in a commercial direction when they should be left to their own devices, or they green light the production of foul and clichéd scripts because they look on paper like a commercial proposition mainly because they aren't challenging, the reality is they are just rubbish. It makes me sad as a NZer.
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