THE CASTLE (Miramax) Starring: Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Sophie Lee, Anthony Simcoe, Charles "Bud" Tingwell. Screenplay: Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy, Tom Gleisner and Santo Cilauro. Producer: Debra Choate. Director: Rob Sitch. MPAA Rating: R (profanity) Running Time: 82 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
THE CASTLE is the kind of comedy that never could have been made in Hollywood. Scratch that -- it could have been made in Hollywood, but it would have been a disaster. The use of a voice-over narrator would have turned into a crutch instead of a source of inspired brilliance. The working class characters might have been either salt-of-the-earth or grotesque, but never the perfect blend of both. The tale of a little guy fighting the system would have been wrapped up by a wildly cheering courtroom gallery, instead of a delightfully profane two-word summation. And the neat and tidy 82-minute running time would have been bloated by another 15 or 20 minutes. Thank the gods of cinema that THE CASTLE was made in Australia, where director/co-screenwriter Rob Sitch has turned the 1997 Aussie smash into the brightest, most raucous comedy to hit America in 1999.
The protagonist of THE CASTLE is Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton), tow truck driver and proud owner of a house at 3 Highview Crescent on the outskirts of Melbourne with his wife Sal (Anne Tenney) and sons Steve (Anthony Simcoe) and Dale (Stephen Curry). It matters little to Darryl that the house is built on landfill next to the airport -- it's his home, his pride and joy, his castle. He's appalled to discover that the government plans a forced relocation of the Kerrigans and their neighbors to make way for an airport expansion. Darryl, however, isn't going to give up his castle without a fight, and launches a challenge -- legal and otherwise -- that goes all the way to the Australian Supreme Court.
It's no small task to laugh _with_ a collection of characters and laugh _at_ them at the same time, but that's exactly what Sitch and his three co-writers have accomplished. In America, the Kerrigans would be referred to as "white trash" -- dog pens in the back yard, a huge aerial antenna on the roof, unsightly additions cobbled together when time permits, a son (Wayne Hope) in jail. Sitch turns the smiling bad taste of the Kerrigans into perfectly-pitched comedy. Making ideal use of Stephen Curry's flat narration as Dale, the film-makers show us a family of simple people who think they're living a life of royalty where beer steins are high art and a meat loaf is a meal fit for a king.
Yet it is exactly that skewed perspective that makes THE CASTLE so endearing even as it sends you rolling on the floor with laughter. Michael Caton's pitch-perfect performance as Darryl is a portrait of brighter-side-looking that re-defines the term. There's a beautiful sincerity to the way he looks with awe on the combination hose/scrub brush created by "idea man" Steve, to his love for the family's pre-fabricated vacation home at a less-than-picturesque lake, to his simple speech at his daughter's wedding. It's a performance so warm that anyone who might look condescendingly at the Kerrigans should feel ashamed. A man's love for what he has -- rather than envy of what he doesn't have -- has rarely felt this genuine.
Of course THE CASTLE is also a David vs. Goliath story, pitting Darryl against the Big Corporation assisted first by a small-time attorney (Tiriel Mora), then by a veteran barrister (Charles "Bud" Tingwell) moved by Darryl's plight. Yet the film is never really about that battle in the way that you'd expect. There are some marvelous comic moments as Darryl takes on his adversaries, but the richness of THE CASTLE comes from the fact that his victory is one of perspective even before a verdict is read. Sure, in some ways it's a one-joke film, and perhaps some viewers will grow weary of that one joke. It just happens to be a joke told with the kind of skill we just don't see very often. An audience trained what to expect from comedies by Hollywood will find expectations in this Down Under comedy turned -- most appropriately -- upside-down.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 home sweet homes: 9.
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