| INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS aka Clubland |
 2007 - AustraliaDirector: Cherie Nowlan
- Reviewed by Linda
Now Jane finds herself settled in Australia, a woman of broken dreams. She toils as a canteen worker by day and has her son Tim (Khan Chittenden, in the straight man role) drive her to perform at third-rate casinos at night. Her other adult son, Mark (the scene-stealing Richard Wilson), is developmentally disabled and is basically quarantined at home, she thinks for his own good. It seems that their homelife has been frozen for years, with Jane weilding a smotheringly overprotective control over the household because it is one of the few things she has power over in her life. That is until Tim gets his first real girlfriend. Introducing the Dwights is being advertised as a wacky family comedy/drama, along the lines of another famous Australian export, Muriel's Wedding. But perhaps the only similarity between the two films is that when you think you'll be in for lots of laughs (and yes, there are funny moments), you'll find yourself walking away remembering the crushing heartbreak. Brenda Blethyn shreds the screen as a woman who has not only seen her dreams slip away, but now is also (in her mind) losing her beloved son. As Tim takes his first steps towards independence, Jane is witheringly mean—humiliating her son, and making his girlfriend's life as miserable as possible. Blethyn is a tour-de-force: her Jane is fierce and funny, but worst of all is incredibly cruel when she is cornered. Blethyn's performance alone keeps this rather typical dysfunctional family drama from being forgettable. The cast is uniformly solid, with a special thanks going to Richard Wilson as the disabled brother for offering much-needed comic relief. Though Introducing the Dwights (thankfully) ends on a high note, the film ultimately made me all weepy and melancholy. After the credits rolled, I had to take a brisk walk in the sunshine to shake the overall sadness of the film. |
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Introducing the Dwights was originally called Clubland, and though the new title isn't much better, Clubland certainly would be misleading for anyone expecting a hip disco rave-athon type movie (which it is not... at all). This dysfunctional family comedy/drama stars Brenda Blethyn as Jane, an aging comedy nightclub act who is popular among retirees hanging out in casinos, but is otherwise past her prime. She is the type of performer that plays off a nice housewifey-mom persona, only to shock her oxygen-tank toting audience with bawdy and brassy humor. Jane still believes that her big break is coming, and still harbors bitterness towards her country-singer ex-husband for, well, making her pregnant when she was *this close* to making it big in the English entertainment world.
