Dr Plonk Review
by Drew Turney
Click Here to read the Interview with Director - Rold de Heer
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We’ve only had one other serious homage to the silent movie in the modern age, Mel Brooks’ 1976 Silent Movie.
In it, Brooks and cohorts Dom Deluise and Marty Feldman conspire to
bring the biggest names in Hollywood together to star in the first
silent movie made in decades.
More than just a movie about a silent movie, Silent Movie
is actually itself a silent movie, and short of late night
documentaries and Bill Collins on TV, it was the first time most
moviegoers from the Boomer and Gen X years had ever seen a film play to
a completely orchestral soundtrack, the written dialogue appearing on
screen during the action.
Rolf de Heer has gone one further.
He’s made a silent movie that could easily have come from the year it’s
set (1907). With the styles of acting, comedy, film technique, make-up,
lighting and effects that befit the period, it’s almost beside the
point to ask whether Dr Plonk is a good movie. It seems just as important to judge the film on the merit of it being an authentic movie.
In this regard, Dr Plonk is surely the first true silent movie there’s been since Al Jolson first said ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet’ in 1928’s The Jazz Singer at the birth of the talkie era.
From
an era when there was a single camera taking nothing but long shots,
the flourishes of performance and movement perfectly suit de Heer’s
cast, led by South Australian street performer Lunghi. You can’t even
say it’s slapstick like The Three Stooges or The Marx Brothers as the
technology, era and styles in the film come from even earlier.
Using
a single camera adapted for use with a hand crank, Dr Plonk tells
the story of a grumpy, impatient inventor who comes to believe the
world will end in 100 years. When the parliament of the day laughingly
dismiss him, Dr Plonk promptly invents a time machine to travel to 2007
and take back proof of his theory.
A tangled web of action and
reaction ensues as Plonk’s hapless lab assistant (Blackwell), his wife
(Szubanski) and even the family dog are whisked back and forth between
the centuries in their high tech machine made of a wooden crate,
landing in bigger trouble every time.
De Heer even manages to
squeeze in some sly social comment as Plonk’s visitations spark a law
enforcement panic, SWAT and anti-terrorism squads called out to deal
with the disappearing, reappearing box. But everyone’s in character,
and the elite troops end up stumbling, falling and rolling around after
Plonk, his family and co-workers like Keystone Kops.
De Heer and
his small crew must have soaked up every detail they could find about
silent films – from the camera angles to the storytelling styles – and
it shows not only that they know their stuff but also that they and the
cast had a great time.
The question is whether 21st century
audiences used to dinosaurs loose in cities or trucks turning into
robots would respond to a silent movie. It’s a comedy and the universal
appeal of laughter is there, but there’s also a strong novelty factor
that has some difficulty keeping hold of you for the entire 80-plus
minutes, and you can’t help feeling Dr Plonk would have been
improved with some trimming.
But for pure inventiveness, the
film deserves to be seen – especially if you’ve never seen a real
silent movie. Of course, now that you’d have to be around 90 to have
seen one, it’s an art form we’re in danger of losing from our
collective consciousness, and that’s reason enough to enjoy Dr
Plonk.
And trivia buffs, watch out for current South Australian premier Mike Rann playing his on screen self. 3.5 out
of 5 Dr Plonk
Australian
release: 30th August,
2007
Cast: Nigel Lunghi, Paul Blackwell, Magda Szubanski
Director: Rolf de Heer
Website: Click
here.
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