Its nice to see an Aussie film given such wide release across the county and for the most part Kangaroo Island is an engaging family drama that covers some well worn tropes but touches on some quite topical issues also.
Lou (Rebecca Breeds AKA Ruby from the mainstay Aussie soap Home & Away - which I don’t watch - Neighbours for Life) is an LA based actress struggling to capitalise on her fleeting fame as a stalker in a TV drama series. After much procrastinating she heads home to Kangaroo Island, a small idyllic locale in South Australia, where she l must confront past familial drama with her father Rory (Erik Thomson), sister Freya (Adelaide Clemens) and Lou’s ex and Freya’s current husband Ben (Joel Jackson).
Yeah it’s messy.
Lou has a flighty surface level charm, that deepens as the layers of her past are revealed, and Breeds has a likeable screen presence. There is humour to balance out the darker themes, including a lost luggage subplot that has a handy knack of reappearing whenever relief if needed, but a sly reference to Breeds soap opera past and a recycling of Abbie Chatfields infamous Bachelor Frankenbite felt a little forced.
Also there is a lot going on in this screenplay, it’s one thing after another with this fam, a love triangle, a conversion to Christianity, a land dispute, a car accident and two pretty deep revelations to process, while the performances are natural, the melodrama inherent in the script isn’t.
Its nice to see an Aussie film given such wide release across the county and for the most part Kangaroo Island is an engaging family drama that covers some well worn tropes but touches on some quite topical issues also.
Lou (Rebecca Breeds AKA Ruby from the mainstay Aussie soap Home & Away - which I don’t watch - Neighbours for Life) is an LA based actress struggling to capitalise on her fleeting fame as a stalker in a TV drama series. After much procrastinating she heads home to Kangaroo Island, a small idyllic locale in South Australia, where she l must confront past familial drama with her father Rory (Erik Thomson), sister Freya (Adelaide Clemens) and Lou’s ex and Freya’s current husband Ben (Joel Jackson).
Yeah it’s messy.
Lou has a flighty surface level charm, that deepens as the layers of her past are revealed, and Breeds has a likeable screen presence. There is humour to balance out the darker themes, including a lost luggage subplot that has a handy knack of reappearing whenever relief if needed, but a sly reference to Breeds soap opera past and a recycling of Abbie Chatfields infamous Bachelor Frankenbite felt a little forced.
Also there is a lot going on in this screenplay, it’s one thing after another with this fam, a love triangle, a conversion to Christianity, a land dispute, a car accident and two pretty deep revelations to process, while the performances are natural, the melodrama inherent in the script isn’t.
