Jack Simpson (Mick Molloy) is the conman of parking in the Cityside district. Jack has been a long standing member (actually 3 times over) of a small traditional Melbourne city lawn bowls club. Having never played bowls in his life, Jack uses his membership to gain some extra cash in leasing out his 3 parking spaces to his fellow work mates. All comes to head though when Jack is forced to play for the club in a time of need.
The club is facing financial hardship and needs every member to help out, in order to pull them out of trouble. Whilst Jack appears at first to be a bit of wild card the club soon learns that he does have some integrity about him.
Not only is this another great example of witty Australian comedy, it’s also one of the greatest line ups of Australian actors both veteran and recent that I have seen in a long time. With the likes of Bill Hunter, Judith Lucy, John Clarke, Samuel Johnson and a cameo appearance for Tony Martin to name a few. All put in a great performance and bring the house down with some entertaining antics and punchy oneliners.
If you can handle a few inches of Mick Molloy’s butt crack you’ll get a great laugh out of this one.

VIDEO
The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is fabulous. The transfer is sharp and clear throughout with only some small evidence of edge enhancement. Shadow detail is equally good and at no time was there any lack of detail due to lighting conditions or transfer quality. The colour palette is also beautiful. Skin tones were evenly rendered throughout.
Unfortunately a few small transfer problems bring this down little. I noticed several small instances of shimmering and a couple of very slight instances of aliasing but nothing that I would consider a major flaw. The only other problem was a few small film artefacts of dust marks and flecks but again nothing you wouldn’t normal expect anyway.
The layer change at 53.40 is not very well placed. Although I’m sure the intention was mid scene change, it missed it by a fraction of a second and is quite obvious as one of the characters pause and the dialogue is cut.

AUDIO
The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track was also very good. The film is predominantly dialogue based and this is always clear and easy to understand and gets its fair share of spread across the front sound stage. Unfortunately though the surround channels do not get a lot of use at all. This is in no way a fault or a problem as there is really no need. Similarly I didn’t hear the sub kick in very much at all but again this is not really required.
The score from Gareth Skinner is a little quirky and very much gives a feeling of humour and character to the film, along with some recent chart songs.

EXTRAS