
Love can be difficult at the best of times, and the remarkable Blacktown is a disarmingly honest tale of love-against-the-odds. Office secretary Nikki (Nikki Owen) is disillusioned with her fraught, ‘sometime’ relationship with her married boyfriend, Peter. Emotionally scarred by the dysfunctional relationship, she all but gives up on the possibility of finding anything more meaningful. But in the wake of a torturous and disturbing blind date, Nikki meets Tony (Tony Ryan), a “black fella on a white bus”. Despite their obvious differences and Nikki’s disillusionment, the charismatic Tony shows Nikki that there is indeed room for love and romance in the desperate world of Blacktown. (Madman Entertainment)
At its heart, it’s a fond tribute to an influential artist and thus one that can speak to everyone’s inner artist, even if it lacks the sincere commentary you may wish to see.
Ultimately the problem with The Bubble is that it plays everything for laughs to get around the audience’s defenses. But it comes off like a privileged white male thinking that ridiculing everyone else equally is the road to equality. And it’s not. And it's definitely not funny to pretend that it is.
This year, in light of the pandemic and the inability to gather with our loved ones, a few of our staff members reviewed their favorite holiday films with the hope of recreating some of the sentimentality that reminds us of home.