Review: Save Your Legs!

Stephen Curry (well-named when you think about it) stars as a cricket tragic who idolises Sachin Tendulkar and is part of a park cricket team. Curry manages to convince his boss (Darshan Jariwala) to organise for his team to have a tour of India. Unfortunately, Curry’s best friends and teammates are fairly unenthused. Brendan Cowell is the reformed bad boy who is now about to become a father, thus obviously being distracted. Even obnoxious party animal Damon Gameau has managed to get himself hitched. Needless to say, Curry is a helluva lot more dedicated to the game than his teammates. Will he be able to arouse enough team spirit and national pride to make a presentable showing in the sub-continent? Indian-Australian actress Pallavi Sharda plays the beautiful daughter of their manager, whom Curry has always had a soft spot for since they were teens. Look for New Zealand cricket legend Sir Richard Hadlee in a cameo as an umpire.

 

An unfortunate return to the dark old days of terrible ocker comedies, this 2012 film about sports and mateship from director Boyd Hicklin (who previously made a documentary about this real-life tale before this debut feature) and writer/co-star Brendan Cowell hasn’t a laugh in it. Worse still, the film’s supposed true story fails to convince as presented here. The protagonists simply don’t convince as a legit team of club cricketers. They seem like a bunch of over-the-hill mates who play cricket every week for a lark, plus one guy (heartthrob TV actor Brenton Thwaites) young enough and talented enough to be a club cricketer, possibly even a state representative. And of course no one else in the team sees this and allows him to go up the order. Damon Gameau’s jealousy towards his obvious talent is just stupid and completely unrealistic. This is just poor writing, because the team honestly don’t seem like anything more than a group of friends, as I said. And this team is supposed to convince us that they could manage to get a gig in India playing against a third-string Indian cricket team? No. Just no. I wasn’t buying it at all. I don’t care if it really happened, this film didn’t make me believe it happened. India may be cricket-mad, but even they only care about their national team and the IPL these days, not a glorified exhibition match (and using the term ‘glorified’ is probably being too charitable) featuring a team of no-namers who on the evidence presented here, aren’t even very good at the game (save Thwaites, and one wonders why he’s teaming with these losers). Even comedies need some internal logic (the fact that Curry’s boss is Indian and agrees to manage them does not count as logical), and some semblance of reality, but this film’s impromptu game of 20/20 actually looks more professional and planned out than the actual ‘legit’ game that precedes it. WHAT?

 

Given this film’s Magical Mythical Indian Tour (true story or not), I think you’d have to know absolutely nothing about cricket to enjoy this (The boss of the team himself pads up unannounced? With no uniform on aside from pads? Right...), and then why would you even watch the film? Cricket fans certainly won’t take to it, and the subject is so niche that no one else will either, especially given how clichéd and poorly written it is This is lazy stuff from people who ought to know better. It’s a film full of dopey Delhi Belly gags, crass Indian stereotypes and ghastly clichés that wouldn’t even rate a mention in the “Warwick Todd Diaries” or a 12^th Man album. It’s the kind of antiquated ‘entertainment’ that I thought this fine country had put well into the past with “You and Your Stupid Mate”, let alone the originators of ‘ocker’ comedy like “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie” and “Crocodile Dundee”. All the mateship crap, which makes me vomit at the best of times, is seriously outdated in 2012.

 

Lead actor Stephen Curry fared much better as one of the Kerrigan clan in 2005’s “The Castle”. Here his character is a bit of a tool. You’re not really playing for Australia, mate. You’re glorified backyard cricketers who miraculously got a match against an Indian team, not the Indian team.

 

What a stupid, stupid film. This is the pits. I hated it, and I love cricket. I found it especially insulting that Curry’s character is a cricket lover and they’re all brimming with Aussie pride, but his favourite player is India’s Sachin Tendulkar? Yes, the Little Master is probably the greatest batsman since Bradman, but let’s face it, the only reason Sachin was chosen was so the director could add some foreign elements to the film for a bit of flavour, and since India is cricket-mad, India and Tendulkar were chosen (By the way, that Sachin Tendulkar bobble-head toy is the most racist thing I’ve seen in ages. The weird thing is, I bet it was made and sold in India). ‘Coz we just had to have a Bollywood dance finale in a film about Aussie sporting pride and prowess, right? No idea how they managed to rope the great New Zealand all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee into appearing in this, but it’s kinda telling that they couldn’t get any Aussie cricketers past or present to turn up (Nor the real Sachin Tendulkar for that matter, he would’ve been beyond this cheap-arse film’s budget).

 

With its corny, old-fashioned and frankly unbelievable plot (true or not), boring characters, and complete lack of humour (Curry’s defensive batting technique is rather cute, though, and crass or not the line ‘I just vomited on my poo’ did make me crack a smile), there’s really nothing to see here, folks. Move along. Save your money. Save your precious time. Avoid it. Cricket tragics best dust off your 12^th Man albums, at least those, for the most part are still funny. And as for you wannabe filmmakers out there, a word of caution: Just because your film is based on a true story does not mean that the audience will be immediately convinced of its authenticity. First try showing your script to someone who is uninitiated in your chosen subject and see if they believe it.

 

Rating: D+