BACKYARD ASHES

Stars: Andrew S Gilbert, John Wood, Felix Williamson, Norah George, Damian Callinan, Lex Marinos, Shingo Usami, Jake Speer, Zenia Starr, Arkaan Shah, Michael Mack, Stephen Holt, Maddison Catlin-Smith and Martin Harper.
Writers: Peter Cox and Mark Grentell.
Director: Mark Grentell.

Rating: 3.5/5

As if the 2013/14 Australian summer had not proven humiliating enough for the English cricket establishment, along comes Mark Grentell’s Backyard Ashes.

The feature debut for the multi-hyphenate auteur is cut from the same Ocker-istic cloth as past odes to suburban idiosyncrasy like The Castle and Emoh Ruo, though thankfully minus the smug satirical edge that slyly mocked their blue-collar ethos. 

Everyman Dougie Waters (Andrew S Gilbert) is a ¼ acre block hero; his little slice of suburban heaven and the family he shares it with is Dream Aussie Life 101. He honours his loving wife, Lilly (Rebecca Massey) and adores his lovely daughter, Kerri (Maddison Catlin-Smith); his vid-camera obsessed teen son Pigeon (Jake Speer), not so much. Most important of all are his factory work-floor mates, amongst them Spock (Damian Callinan), Taka (Shingo Usami), Sachin (Waseem Khan) and Merv (John Wood), all of whom share his passion for beer, blokey mateship and, above all else, backyard cricket.

The arrival of British corporate cost-cutter Edward Lords (a broader-than-broad Felix Williamson) disrupts the dynamic of the group; he sacks Dougie’s neighbour and best mate Norm (Stephen Holt) then thoughtlessly moves into the man’s deserted house (of all Grentell’s strong suits, subtlety is not one of them). A terrible accident involving Lord’s prized pet cat, Dexter and Dougie’s barbeque (which is not as funny as the film needs it to be) sets in motion a winner-take-all cricket match between the boozed-up Aussies and the prickly Poms, the victor taking home the charred remnants of puss.

Grentell’s reliance upon deeply intrinsic cultural references (Richie Benaud impersonations, ‘keys-in-the-pitch’ gags and gently racist humour) should win over a solid slice of the domestic audience, but offshore engagements and in-flight screenings (especially on British Airways) are unlikely. Backyard Ashes is so filled with minutiae humour that targets and skewers Aussie summer-time suburban obsessions, it often resembles a big-screen reworking of the iconic TV series, Kingswood Country.

Shot in the New South Wales’ western megalopolis of Wagga Wagga with the full support of the local city council, Backyard Ashes feels very much like a passion project brought to life by a community who understands the lead character’s essence and the modern working class man’s plight. The Australian film industry has not offered up a more likable spin on the larrikin values that built this nation in a long time.

Backyard Ashes does not pretend to be an intellectual exercise, but it sort of becomes one despite itself. By striving for working-class honesty over hard-sell insight, it achieves both. Grentell’s film defines both our nation’s underdog competitiveness towards the mother country and our ultimate acceptance, through the bonding influence of a shared sporting mythology, that we are not that different from each other after all.