Kath & Kimderella Review: Don’t look at me
Kath & Kimderella: 3/10
The usual outcome for successful television shows upgraded to the multiplex is to
accentuate what was winning in small doses so that it becomes grotesque (exhibit A:
the Sex and the City movies), but in Kath & Kimderella, the spin-off to the hit
Australian sitcom Kath & Kim, the show’s creators have attempted to make a stand-
alone movie moderately distinct from the small-screen episodes. It’s a welcome idea
but unfortunately the execution is so deeply flawed that the film suffers mightily.
Kath & Kimderella begins with a mass of explanatory set-up, detailing the lives of
suburban mum Kath Day-Knight (Jane Turner) and her self-obsessed grown
daughter Kim Day Craig (Gina Riley), as well as their various partners, friends and
offspring, and from there it never really stops offering up florid plot developments
and bursts of exposition. The film is so busy that it often forgets to be funny.
Kath, Kim and the latter’s daggy offsider, Sharon (Magda Szubanski) are soon
shipped off to Papilloma, a bankrupt principality in Italy, where the monarch, King
Javier (Rob Sitch, winningly borrowing John Pilger’s hair and Julio Iglesias’s patter)
mistakes Kath for a wealthy noble and plans to seduce her, while his son fixates on
Kim as a princess. In a castle full of mysterious noises and secret tunnels – it’s like
something Bing Crosby and Bob Hope used to stumble through – there’s a wedding,
a rebellion and magnificent eye rolling by Richard E. Grant as a courtier.
Turner and Riley, who first brought the television show to air in 2002, wrote the film,
and it’s directed by television veteran Ted Emery. The production values are decent
(Italian exteriors, Melbourne interiors), but several set-pieces, including a dance
number choreographed to Wham and a sword fight between King Javier and Kath’s
husband, suburban butcher Kel (Glenn Robbins), never take off because they feel
physically constrained.
The humour stems from the television show: the same verbal tics, catchphrases,
garish bodies and tacky clothes. The debate about whether Riley and Turner exploit
their working class characters or celebrate them needs to be replaced by one
questioning whether they’re still interested in them. Little happens between Kath and
Kim, and there’s no flight of creativity equal to the television series having Kylie
Minogue play a grown version of Kim’s daughter, Epponnee Rae.
There is screen time for Riley and Turner’s other regular characters, the affluent,
squawking Prue and Trude, but why does a comedy need comic relief?
Craig Mathieson – SMH – August 28, 2012
Kath and Kimderella opens Sept 6