After watching Abe Forsythe's wonderfully entertaining zombie comedy Little Monsters I was curious to see what else he'd down, which lead me to Down Under, a movie that looks for the lighter side of race riots.

Based on a true incident in Australia, this movie follows two groups of Australian citizens, one white, one of Lebanese decent, who decide to go out and fight in an ongoing skirmish. The groups are rather similar in that each is a bunch of hotheads and one guy who unwillingly gets dragged into the action.

I only watched about a third of this short movie, and just didn't find it that funny. In part that may be because the Australian accents caused me to miss some jokes, but I also just felt the humor seemed obvious and lacked cleverness, or even clever stupidity of the (Dude Where's My Car variety).

Not saying it was terrible, but it just didn't work for me.

When I heard that Abe had made a comedy about the Cronulla riots I was already laughing just from the concept, I was ready to tell all my mates to check it out before ever pressing play.... Sadly when I did press play that is when the laughing ended. At first I was expecting a slapstick/goofball comedy like Ned which was hilarious, that wasn't happening so I thought "Ok I guess it is a dark comedy, no problem". By 15 minutes in I was thinking "is this actually suppose to be funny at all?". This film was terrible and boring as hell, story was sloppy and it came to a pretty stupid ending. I really don't get my hopes up for too many films these days but when you know a writer/director has talent you kind of do get your hopes up and to see the serve you dog feces is pretty disappointing. My honest advice with this film is just don't bother, it is a waste of an hour. If you want a laugh just watch his first film "Ned".

This movie had lots of raving reviews from critics but I can't add to that list I'm afraid. I love independent Aussie films but this one won't be in the "must see Australian films" lists of most people although it's documenting an important event, the Cronulla riots of 2005. The comedy here is just too stupid, purposefully or not, the characters are nearly all unlikeable and the story too farfetched to bring a smile to this face. It reminded me of "Housos" which was turned into a movie: fun for 5 minutes then it got old real quickly. The acting is ok I suppose.