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Canberra Today 14°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘Now Add Honey’ (M) 98 minutes ***

Now Add HoneyTHIS family production (written by and starring Robyn Butler and directed by her husband Wayne Hope) is a sort of screwball family comedy.

Caroline (Butler) is at the airport to greet her sister Beth (Portia de Rossi) from Hollywood with the star of a kids’ TV series, her 16-year-old daughter Honey (Lucy Fry) and her entourage.

Honey is exploited by her producer, her director and, most of all, her mother. The screenplay asks us to see Honey as a mixture of spoiled brat and sad case. We spend most of the film waiting to see her get straightened out by good solid Aussie common sense.

But it’s not going to happen quickly or without inflicting a certain amount of pain on just about the whole extended family. The cops send Beth from the airport straight to rehab for having 500 Oxycontin tabs in her luggage. Caroline’s husband spends a lot of time at his office above a health shop run by a young woman who’s just a teensy bit pregnant. Caroline’s children resent Honey’s disrupting influence in their home. Caroline meets a dishy chef who knows a good thing when he sees her. Honey’s in a music video that teeters on the brink of soft porn. And freelance photographer Rick has booked Honey for what promises to be a set of very dodgy pix.

There’s not much that’s not to like in “Now Add Honey”. Nor much that commands admiration. It’s more than a potboiler, less than quality Australian cinema. Ambivalent just about sums it up.

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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