MOVIE REVIEW ... MATCHING JACK

MOVIE REVIEW ...

MATCHING JACK

Australian cinema has endured a rough time in the last few years.  Whilst the quantity of productions hasn’t been the issue, the quality has been.  Many have shone with much promise only to deliver patchy versions of what might have been.  Matching Jack is no different despite flashes of inspired dramatics, it eventually toddles along in the wasteland of lukewarm local films.

 

Learning her son Jack (Tom Russell) has leukaemia, Marisa’s (Jacinda Barrett) also deals with the discovery of her husband David’s (Richard Roxburgh) extra-marital affairs. Wanting to care for her son whilst containing her fury at David’s transgressions, she turns this to advantage when the possibility he may have fathered another child surfaces.  Hopeful of finding a potential bone marrow donor she confronts his many mistresses helped by Connor (James Nesbitt).  Father of a son suffering from the same affliction, his positive attitude provides solace to both in the dark days ahead. 

It’s very difficult making such a serious subject entertaining.  Where tackling such complicated issues in a simple manner enables a better understanding of the character’s traumas. Very few movies have found the right tonal balance.  Matching Jack takes its more light-hearted route to its extreme with some preposterous scenarios diluting any ounce of believability.   With patients freely walking out of hospital, rooms filled with burning candles and beds turned into boats, the sacrifice of logic in favour of coy cuteness makes a mockery of the very topic it’s meant to convincingly convey.

Despite frustrating unevenness, some aspects save it from being a total wash-out.  Whenever focussing on the young boy’s struggles it effectively articulates the desperation of adult and child in finding a cure for such a horrible disease. Their sense of hope provides the strength needed to see them through their terrible ailments, with the actors contributing good performances.  It’s a shame they’re lumbered with such a bad screenplay as its reliance on convenient contrivances ruins much of their good work.

Matching Jack should have been much better than it is.  Whilst its central theme is engaging, the rest is a shambles with some abysmal writing lacking the courage of its convictions.  For every good local film there’s a mediocre one with this joining the less than illustrious list of parochial disappointments. 

Movie Review Rating 4 / 10

Movie Review by Patrick Moore

Matching Jack released in Australia on Thursday 19 August 2010.

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Patrick Moore's Movie Review is an alternative look at current movie releases in Australia.