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Purely Joyful Movie!

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The hills are alive with the sound of music. It is not the voices of the Von Trapps of Austria, but the Moochmore girls of suburban Australia. Some maintain that their screaming is better than their singing. The girls are driving their neighbors and dad/husband, the mayor of Dolphin Heads, mental. However, it could be the other way around. When the mayor leaves the Moochmore girls and places a scary, belligerent nanny at the head of the family, more than one person's delicate fantasy world gets upset. This hilarious and clever film is also moving and poignant. I thought I had the characters and film figured out, but they kept on surprising me. It is such a well-written story, with amazing depth, wonderful acting and interesting characters, that – like me – you may want to watch it again. It could be that the Moochmore girls are only as mental as they let people say they are.

Shirley Moochmore (Rebecca Gibney) is a mother of five suffering under her absentee cheating husband Barry (Anthony LaPaglia). She wants to be Maria Von Trapp with her kids. All five of the kids think they are mentally ill although maybe one of them actually is. Barry is the small town mayor of Dolphin Heads. When he sends her to a mental institution, he picks up hitchhiker Shaz (Toni Collette) to look after his kids. The oldest daughter Coral (Lily Sullivan) has a wacky shark-obsessed boss Trevor (Liev Schreiber) at the waterpark.Writer/director P.J. Hogan reunites with Toni Collette to bring an outlandish sensibility to this Australian suburb. As Shaz points out, everybody suffers from one form of mental illness or another. I like all 5 girls and I love Toni Collette. The start is a little bit problematic as we wait for the arrival of Toni. Her time with the girls is fun and quirky. It has an uplifting sense. Everything is going as expected, but the movie does take a turn into the darker side. I'm not oppose to the turn, but it is very jarring. And like other Hogan films, there is a couple of singalong moments.

This is a terrific, intelligent, hilarious, energetic, female-led script, that will have you weeping and cheering simultaneously as the lead (Toni Colette) throws punches in the face of situations that girls and women put up with silently everyday.Its acerbically written script depicts suburban life in an average Australian coastal town, and the idiosyncratic personalities that make up the place.Poor Box office sales in the US are not a reflection of the films worth, but more a result of the film producers probably dedicating zero budget to promoting it outside Australia. More is the pity, as it's a rock solid film, if at times slightly difficult to understand the accent if you're not a native.Great film for a girls night in, and a film every Dad needs to see.

A dysfunctional family on the Gold Coast is set to implode, due to the father's constant philandering and the mother's inability to control her five daughters. The long suffering mother played with great sympathy by Rebecca Gibney, takes to singing songs from The Sound Of Music in her backyard which horrifies her straight laced neighbors. She is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her husband doesn't even know who his daughters are, while they in turn imagine all sorts of symptoms of their own, to hide the one essential fact that they are unpopular because the community sees their mother as a bona fide nut case. He has his wife committed to an institution, but in a move that is typical of how this illness is regarded, her condition is covered up, by saying she has gone on holiday. This explanation was a common lie, and has been used for decades, it was the same lie told about my own mother many times over, who suffered a series of severe 'mental breakdowns' throughout her entire adult life. Into this domestic maelstrom strides an eccentric non–conformist (Colette) who we instantly know will set about restoring this family unit, by using unorthodox methods. Instead of getting them to conform in a military style take over, she takes the girls on a journey of self discovery, to embrace their eccentricities and discover their inner strengths. She speaks from her heart based on her own experiences which hint at dark secrets from her past. There are people who will criticize this film as dismissing a serious topic to get a few cheap laughs, and at times the film even resorts to crude slapstick. Nothing could be further from the truth. What this film stresses time and time again is the need for sympathy, empathy and a measure of acceptance when things are beyond our immediate understanding. Collette is outstanding as Shaz, who is part life coach, part manipulator, part politician and wholly anarchic. She is given solid support by newcomer Lily Sullivan who plays the oldest of the daughters, Coral. In many ways this film is a female rites of passage film about Coral, but it is much, much more than that. A little film that proves the old adage, that sometimes laughter is the best medicine, while at the same time providing plenty of food for thought on a serious issue.