REVIEW: In Like Flynn is a dire retelling of what screen legend Errol Flynn supposedly did before he took Hollywood by storm

REVIEW: In Like Flynn is the biopic of a young Errol Flynn nobody wanted. Did this dud really cost 12 million bucks to make? Oh, my ...

"Thomas Cocquerel'' stars as Errol Flynn in the QLD-made film In Like Flynn

IN LIKE FLYNN (MA15+)

Rating: One star (1 out of 5)

Director: Russell Mulcahy (Razorback)

Starring: Thomas Cocquerel, Isabel Lucas, Corey Large, David Wenham, Clive Standen.

Out like a light

News reports at the time of shooting In Like Flynn quoted the production budget for this dire Australian period adventure flick as being in the vicinity of 12 million dollars.

Not pictured in these stories were photographs of investors kissing their money goodbye. Or setting fire to it.

Actor Thomas Cocquerel as the lead Errol Flynn in the QLD-made film In Like Flynn.

Even if In Like Flynn had have been half good as a movie, it is hard to imagine queues forming for a bulldust-coated account of Australian screen icon Errol Flynn’s early days as our very own Indiana Jones.

Particularly when the old Australian Crawl song Errol got there first, told pretty much the same story inside four minutes, and left us all with something to hum for years to come.

Releasing an already antiquated curio such as In Like Flynn in 2018 is like asking viewers to spring for a ticket to a movie chronicling Chips Rafferty’s days as a plumber’s apprentice, Jack Thompson driving a taxi to make ends meet, or that time Paul Hogan painted the whole of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

According to Flynn’s fanciful memoirs - a dodgy blueprint for a movie if ever there was one - his pre-fame years were packed full of near-death encounters with cannibals in Papua New Guinea, cut-throat Irish gangsters, renegade Chinese drug cartels and, umm, a corrupt Townsville mayor.

Tom Cocquerel as Errol Flynn in In Like Flynn

Not to mention the hundreds of women who just couldn’t resist Flynn (whose fabled charisma eludes the range of lead actor Thomas Cocquerel) as soon as they laid eyes on him.

Though history does record that the bloke was a flagrant, dazzle-’em-then-ditch-’em type, there is some quite icky about the disposable manner in which In Like Flynn portrays females who fall under his spell. Particularly now in the era of #MeToo.

If the source material is an obvious myth, the movie version - which also includes a yachting odyssey in search of lost gold - is a tone-deaf mess. Avoid.

Originally published as REVIEW: In Like Flynn is a dire retelling of what screen legend Errol Flynn supposedly did before he took Hollywood by storm