Movie Log: Danny Deckchair

The first official movie of my new "short and funny" regime is Danny Deckchair, an Australian romantic comedy from 2003. (Which reminds me that I saw someone online, in the last day or two, asking about romantic comedies from the last five years that weren't completely based on the woman being a wedding-obsessed, ridiculously klutzy dingbat -- this just misses the timing window, but otherwise qualifies.)

It's an amusing trifle, with Rhys Ifans as Danny Morgan, a Syndey guy in the building trades who just wants to take his upcoming two-week holidays camping up north somewhere. His live-in girlfriend, Trudy (Justine Clarke), was going along with the idea until she has a chance to meet local news personality Sandy Upman (Rhys Muldoon) -- she's a real estate agent or something like that -- whereupon she makes up a story to put the kibosh on the big trip.

So Danny's on vacation, but has nowhere to go, so he's moping about the house. And then he sees Trudy with Sandy one day while driving in the city. So, that weekend, when they have a big "barbie" at their house, Danny gets his friends to help him attach a whole lot of helium balloons to a lawnchair. He intends to just go up a bit and then come back down, but it doesn't work out that way.

After a "ohmygod I'm flying" sequence -- which mostly serves to show how completely impossible, if humorous, the idea is -- Danny crash-lands in the small town of Clarence, some distance away, in the backyard of parking cop Glenda (Miranda Otto). On his way down, he disrupted the local fireworks show, which led the only regular cop in town and a bunch of firemen to rush over there, thinking it was a UFO. Glenda quickly claims that Danny is a professor of hers from "Uni," and so everyone in town starts calling him "Professor." (It's not at all clear at this point, or for a while afterward, whether Danny and Glenda know each other's names -- even though he's living in her house.)

From there, the movie mostly focuses on Danny, who learns -- as do all similar movie protagonists -- that small towns are perfect, gemlike places to live and that a place like Clarence (and a girl like Glenda) are all that his life has been missing. Meanwhile, Trudy has become a media darling -- under the tutelage of Sandy -- pleading for any information on Danny's whereabouts. (I've never seen Justine Clark in anything else, so I'll reserve judgment on her acting talents in general, but she plays Trudy as an ever-expanding collection of tics and odd facial expressions as the movie goes on.)

Eventually, Danny falls in love with Glenda and vice versa...but then is torn away from her by events that you probably can guess. Will he go back to Clarence, in an over-the-top romantic gesture? Do you remember what kind of movie this is? All ends happily, as we knew it would.

Danny Deckchair is a minor movie, but it's pleasant and diverting, particularly for those of us who like to listen to various Australian accents for about an hour and a half. I do think the female half of the audience was cruelly robbed; Miranda Otto is massively cuter than Rhys Ifans, and even Rhys Muldoon is only a passable slice of beefcake who doesn't get a lot of screentime or business. But, so long as you can believe that someone could fall in love with Ifans, it mostly works as a story. (Just don't think too much about the plot, particularly that balloon flight.)