Movie 122: The Castle

The Kerrigans are a simple Australian family. They live in a house next to the airport, have built themselves a summer home and are very happy. Largely thanks to dad Darryl’s sunny attitude that infects the whole lot of them. But when the airport is going to expand their house is bought against their will. Darryl refuses to accept that, a mans home is his castle, and fights back against the big boys.

It’s a true underdog story. Well, not a TRUE story but you know what I mean. A little guy who’s happy with the little he’s got and refuses to let it go.

The characters are all quirky as hell. The whole story is told from the perspective of the youngest son, Dale, who narrates the whole thing. Darryl is a simple man who runs a towing business and does a lot of DIY on the house to improve it. His son Steve buys things from the local trade paper to sell on again for a profit. His wife does handcraft type stuff.

They’re all a bit dense, but in an incredibly charming way. Every night Darryl complements his wife on her great cooking, when its basically some chicken and seasoning in front of him. They’re pretty much on the bottom rung of the ladder but couldn’t be much happier.

I’m not the biggest fan of Australian cinema as they turn out a lot of turkeys. Even with the over arching plot of this film it boils down to a character piece, and if the characters aren’t up to it then it’s a pain to watch. Thankfully the acting and the script here are more than up to the task. If your pretty poor like myself you’ll probably have known a few people that are quite similar to the Kerrigans. They don’t care that there house is zoned in a terrible place, that a lot of their stuff is pretty much crap and that their biggest achievement is a daughter with a hair dressing diploma. The little things are what matters.

And that’s the movies main message. Yes its about the little guy going after a giant, but the message is that family is what is important. They’re happy because they have each other. 70 grand is probably quite a lot for them, though it wouldn’t buy all that much so not really, but the airport could be offering 700 and they still wouldn’t want to sell their home. And the whole thing comes down to that intangible home factor.

There’s a lot of quotable dialogue here Darryl has a couple of catch phrases that would be very well known if this was a bigger budget movie. I’ve no idea what it cost but its shot cheaply and the shoot was as long as the food budget would stretch (11 days). The family is called Kerrigan so that they could borrow a tow truck from a real company as there was no money for that kind of thing.

I watched it because Eric Bana is in it, but he’s barely in it at all. I’m far from disappointed though. If you need a laugh then hunt this one out and give it a shot as it’s bloody brilliant mate.

Next up: Penelope