Movies

Four hazard-prone mates, a gunshot wedding, a random animal and illicit substances: no, it's not The Hangover, it's the Australian equivalent A Few Best Men. Treading the same line of gross-out boys-gone-wild humour, this raucous comedy tries hard, but the sense of deja vu is all too obvious.

Stephan Elliott's comedy credentials from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Easy Virtue make him the right director for this material, but those films had a lot more heart and soul, and less sheep poo and gimp masks.

British backpacker David (Xavier Samuel) drags his three best mates, pack-leader Graham (Kris Marshall), neurotic Graham (Kevin Bishop) and drunk-and-depressed Luke (Tim Draxl), from rainy London to the sweeping Blue Mountains out of Sydney for his wedding to Australian lass Mia (Laura Brent).

At the home of Mia's waspy parents Jim (Jonathan Biggins) and Barbara (Olivia Newton-John), and deadpan sister Daphne (an underused Rebel Wilson), the wedding quickly becomes a domino effect of epic mishaps involving bodily fluids, injuries and a gender-bending ram named Ramsey (of course).

A Few Best Men is one of those films that reveals all of its best jokes in the trailer. If you haven't watched it, you might laugh a bit harder, but that doesn't take away from the film's leaden signposting of every gag about 30 minutes before it takes place. Some gags are genuinely hilarious, but the cringe-worthy quotient really upsets the balance.

It's a shame because the performances are mostly excellent. Samuel proves he's leading man material, and his British accent never falters. The four male leads have snappy chemistry, while Olivia Newton-John finally gets the role we've been dying to see her in for years. Her mum-gone-wild is like Sandy at the end of Grease if she'd discovered coke while flying up into the clouds with John Travolta.

The weakest link is Brent, who overacts so hard we really can't invest anything in her relationship with Samuel.

Australia needs more envelope-pushing comedies, but A Few Best Men doesn't deliver.