Audrey film review: comedy with teenage hopes and tacky tropes

When it comes to Australian film, the comedy path is well-worn. Present a collection of cartoonishly unpleasant characters acting badly in a desperate quest to achieve dreams that only underline how shallow they are, and the laughs will surely follow. Right?

Audrey at least has one trick up its garish sleeve, with a title character supposedly so awful she’s a blight on the lives of her not-exactly-great-themselves family. Without her, will they soar to new heights, or find new ways to wallow in the muck?

Once a semi-famous soap star, Ronnie Lipsick (Jackie van Beek) has not taken well to suburban life. Her handyman husband Cormack (Jeremy Lindsay) is disinterested in, well, pretty much everything; youngest daughter Nora (Hannah Diviney) struggles more with her bitchy schoolmates and a lack of parental attention than the cerebral palsy that’s left her wheelchair-bound.

Watch the Audrey trailer

As for oldest daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier), she’s 18 and sick of being the focus of her mother’s thwarted dreams. Forget the long planned for career on the stage – she’s running off to Nepal with her ‘sensitive’ musician boyfriend. But Ronnie isn’t letting go that easily.

When a somewhat heightened case of teenage acting out ends up with Audrey in a coma, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the family to see the upside. Soon Cormack is hooking up with a (male) porn producer, Nora is leveraging the family tragedy into schoolyard fame, and Ronnie realises her long-lost career can once again be hers – just so long as she pretends to be Audrey.

It’s not hard to see where all this is going. Nobody ever wakes from a coma, right? Yet as the story comes into focus, the opening act seems more and more out of place. It’s increasingly clear that the idea is meant to be that Audrey has ruined everyone’s life. Once she’s gone, everyone else can shine.

And yet, Cormack’s problems have nothing to do with Audrey. Nora’s dramas are entirely due to the fact her school is full of superficial dickheads. As for Ronnie, focusing all her dreams on Audrey is a Ronnie problem. You’d almost think Audrey was the innocent in all this – except that the third act is all about her being a demonic hellchild focused on chaos and revenge.

Audrey: getting better

The good news here is that Audrey gets better as it goes along. The characters become more sympathetic and nuanced, the story less mocking of their desires for a happier life. Well, unless you’re Audrey – it’s all downhill for her, presumably so the film’s outright murderous ending can come across as even slightly justifiable.

It’s certainly a problem story-wise that if you removed the big moment that establishes the premise, Audrey would simply leave the country and you’d have exactly the same second act, only without the need for a third. Though who knows? Maybe Ronnie would still rather see her daughter dead than let her dreams go.

Ronnie is the most developed character (thanks in part to an enjoyably nuanced performance from van Beek), but she’s yet another ageing suburbanite living in a dreamworld we’re invited to heap scorn on. ‘Pushy stage mum’ was a semi-reliable comedy character 30 years ago: in an era where it’s the kids who are chasing (online) fame, it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is being sent up here beyond the importance of old people knowing when its time to get offstage.

Audrey: comedy

But what about the comedy? It’s blunt at best: Cormack is introduced jerking off into a fleshlight only to be interrupted by a horrified Nora before the whole family gets involved and the dog runs off with the used sex toy. Hilarious! Don’t worry, the dog gets poisoned later.

Time and again, the traditional tacky tropes are wheeled out, with occasional success. Audrey gets a clueless memorial concert, because making fun of earnest teens is always comedy gold. It’s not enough that Cormack stumbles onto a porn set, it has to be Biblical-themed porn (later he writes a script titled ‘Cain and Anal’). Why should we care about these characters when the movie treats them as a joke?

Oh right, it’s a comedy.

Audrey is in Australian cinemas from 7 November.

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