Starring: Arj Barker, Jonno Roberts, Madeleine West, Tiriel Mora, Roy Billing, Gyton Grantley, Steph Tisdell, Ashlee Lollback, Annie Byron, Dave Eastgate, JJ Pantano, Danny Faifai, Tracy Lee Maxwell, Brad McMurray
Distributor: Bonsai Films
Runtime: 91 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2024
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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Intentionally, the title seems to be indicating some kind of mental establishment. While there are some quite strange goings-on, an absurd character or two, or three, the title actually refers to a property in the remote small Australian town of Cobweb; a macadamia farm.
This is a small Australian film, often tongue-in-cheek, happy to send up American innocents abroad, a jibe or three at some New Zealanders, and a range of local characters who populate Australian television series, especially the comedies
Our central character is an American, Brendan Brandon (Barker), who seems to be a cryptocurrency expert in San Francisco, giving self-satisfied speeches to admiring crowds, but then falling on hard times. We have already seen an old man seemingly prospecting, finding a manhole and going down – and disappearing. He is Mitch and his friend, Harry, phones Brendan to say he has inherited Mitch’s macadamia farm. What on earth does Brendan know about farms or macadamias? Answer, of course, nothing.
Brendan flies to Australia and is picked up from the plane by Esme who runs the local pub (incorporating all shops, the diner, the bar . . .), looking for all the world like a Dame Edna caricature. Harry is played by Mora in his sad sack style. There are various characters in the town, including old Dazza who spends time at the bar, Sgt Blake, who has all kinds of jobs in Cobweb from policing to delivering the mail (and enjoyable performance from Tisdale), the enterprising Farmer Dee who tells of an avocado farmer who has disappeared. He helps Brendan with the macadamia trees and cultivation – and then disappears.
What is Brendan to make of all of this? Especially when Harry tells him that he has to produce 20,000 tons of macadamia nuts to finally inherit.
Meanwhile, we look below the surface. There is a fracking enterprise which disturbs the locals and has disturbed Mitch. In the tunnels there is a mad scientist, Zoran (NZ actor Roberts), with an efficient assistant and two miners digging in the trenches). It is finally revealed what Zoran is up to – an attempt to assist New Zealand economy.
Since this is also a light comedy, there had better be a bit of romance. There is the enterprising farmer, Kim, who is attracted to Brendan (some of the audience perhaps not entirely sure why), and her rather precocious young son.
When Brendan fails by a couple of kilos to meet his quota, he goes prospecting and uncovers Zoran’s mad enterprise. And, happy ending, Brendan seeing sense, of course, and staying in Australia with Kim and her son and the macadamia nuts – and all the new friends in Cobweb.
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