the actual film is 10 times as batshit crazy as the marketing materials suggest. It is also a fabulously sly, cynical and cheeky coming-of-age story
an energetic, irreverent, autobiographically inspired affair filled with key swapping, children running amok and a rotting 200-tonne whale, the film proves a mixed bag but, given the era on display, its messiness always feels appropriate
a cheerfully vulgar, consistently amusing and sometimes hilarious parody of life in a suburban Aussie cul-de-sac in the mid-1970s