"Looking for Alibrandi" was a great success in Australia. I'm not sure why. Was its success manufactured by the Australian press? Was it that Australian teenagers felt the film spoke to them, personally? It doesn't really matter: either alternative is depressing.
Maybe I just wasn't prepared to be charitable. The opening volley of first-person narration put me in a sour mood from which I never really emerged - partly because there was a second volley after the first, and a third, and a fourth - in short, WHENEVER director Kate Woods could think of nothing better to do, which was often, Pia Miranda's voice over cut across the soundtrack like a close-miked violin. It's a clumsy device. Instead of bringing us closer to Josie it actually distances us. When will directors and screenwriters get the idea? First-person narration cannot go far wrong as a literary device, and it can raise a book to heights the author could not otherwise have reached - "Great Expectations" is a good example of the magic spell a first-person narrator can cast. But it's usually a DISASTROUS device in a film. It's disastrous here. -And, not content with over-using the first-person voice over, Woods also over-uses the SECOND clumsiest cliché of film: the pop song interlude. Gargh.
There are fleeting moments - a moment of silent communication between Josie and her father in the headmaster's office, a wounding remark made by Josie's boyfriend - in which the film springs to life, promising to cast off its first-person cocoon and take flight. At such moments I WANTED the film to become good. I really did. My hopes were always dashed. (Usually within seconds, I might add.)
The trouble with "Looking for Alibrandi" is that one can smell the very pages of the book on which it was based. I haven't read the book, but I know the type. It's one of those ghastly "young adult" novels. I think I could have felt the prose even without hearing it: glib, scientifically crafted to meet the carefully researched needs of a particular age group, careless of the concerns of those who lie outside that age group by so much as a month. Books of this kind have not so much a story as a synthetic tom-tom beat of Relevant Issues. Their absence of aesthetic merit is so complete it must be deliberate. And they are oh, so insular. In the entire history of mankind, has there ever been, or will there ever be, a "young adult" novel that's also a good book? Hah. -Oh, there may be good books that are by and large READ by teenagers, like "The Lord of the Rings". That book attracted a teenage audience by accident. "Looking for Alibrandi" attracted a teenage audience by design. The difference is crucial.
As I say, I haven't read the book. I could be wrong about it, and I apologise to Melina Marchetta if I am. I don't apologise to the film, though: it's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be based on the kind of book I think it's based on.
Maybe I just wasn't prepared to be charitable. The opening volley of first-person narration put me in a sour mood from which I never really emerged - partly because there was a second volley after the first, and a third, and a fourth - in short, WHENEVER director Kate Woods could think of nothing better to do, which was often, Pia Miranda's voice over cut across the soundtrack like a close-miked violin. It's a clumsy device. Instead of bringing us closer to Josie it actually distances us. When will directors and screenwriters get the idea? First-person narration cannot go far wrong as a literary device, and it can raise a book to heights the author could not otherwise have reached - "Great Expectations" is a good example of the magic spell a first-person narrator can cast. But it's usually a DISASTROUS device in a film. It's disastrous here. -And, not content with over-using the first-person voice over, Woods also over-uses the SECOND clumsiest cliché of film: the pop song interlude. Gargh.
There are fleeting moments - a moment of silent communication between Josie and her father in the headmaster's office, a wounding remark made by Josie's boyfriend - in which the film springs to life, promising to cast off its first-person cocoon and take flight. At such moments I WANTED the film to become good. I really did. My hopes were always dashed. (Usually within seconds, I might add.)
The trouble with "Looking for Alibrandi" is that one can smell the very pages of the book on which it was based. I haven't read the book, but I know the type. It's one of those ghastly "young adult" novels. I think I could have felt the prose even without hearing it: glib, scientifically crafted to meet the carefully researched needs of a particular age group, careless of the concerns of those who lie outside that age group by so much as a month. Books of this kind have not so much a story as a synthetic tom-tom beat of Relevant Issues. Their absence of aesthetic merit is so complete it must be deliberate. And they are oh, so insular. In the entire history of mankind, has there ever been, or will there ever be, a "young adult" novel that's also a good book? Hah. -Oh, there may be good books that are by and large READ by teenagers, like "The Lord of the Rings". That book attracted a teenage audience by accident. "Looking for Alibrandi" attracted a teenage audience by design. The difference is crucial.
As I say, I haven't read the book. I could be wrong about it, and I apologise to Melina Marchetta if I am. I don't apologise to the film, though: it's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to be based on the kind of book I think it's based on.