Girl Asleep * *

Girl Asleep….and so were the audience.

You no like me Flip?

I can’t figure out if this is a children's film with inappropriate adult scenes or an adult film with puerile ideas.

It’s like the makers think if they use other films as a source of their inspiration we’ll be impressed by their originality. One minute it’s Napoleon Dynamite, then it’s Mean Girls, then it’s Donnie Darko,

To let us know the era they’ve acquired lots of stuff from the 70’s, which is quite unnecessary as it could have been set in any era - besides half the time it’s set in some fantasy land. The whole 70’s thing comes across as part of it’s unimaginative determination to look imaginative. Daggie 70’s stuff is cool I suppose.

 It’s Greta’s  fifteenth birthday, but being a shy girl she doesn’t want to go through with it. Too late. Her parents have given out invites to the school.  

On the night of the party the film decides to become a children’s parable like  Alice in Wonderland or The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe or Where The Wild Things Are as the back fence opens into the woods and Greta enters another world.  
It’s a tedious scene that just seems to go on and on and on.  In fact it is the whole second act. In this world, Daddy becomes a boogie man, Mummy becomes an ice queen, and a self sufficient brave heroic girl shows her the way… you get the sledgehammer drift.

I don’t mind filmmakers going off the page, taking risks and stretching us but there is something so freaking contrived and irritating about this film. Like a not-so-clever person trying to give a clever speech.

There’s three bitches in it who are unkind to Greta just because there is something about her….  I know what they mean.  That’s pretty well the way I feel about this film.

It won the South Australian Film Awards Best Film 2016.  They must be mad.