REVIEW: Swinging Safari gets drunk on the spirit(s) of 1970s Australia with bonking and booze

REVIEW: Swinging Safari uses a polyester slingshot to catapult viewers deep into mid-1970s Australia, an esoteric era awash with boozy barbecues and bad taste as far as the eye can see.

SWINGING SAFARI (M)

Rating: two and a half stars (2.5 out of 5)

Director: Stephan Elliott (A Few Best Men)

Starring: Guy Pearce, Julian McMahon, Radha Mitchell, Kylie Minogue, Asher Keddie, Jeremy Sims, Jack Thompson.

Remembering the good old days in a bad old haze

The opening act of the erratic new Australian comedy Swinging Safari is nothing short of sensational.

Director Stephan Elliott (still best known for his hit debut Priscilla, Queen Of the Desert) uses a polyester slingshot to catapult his audience deep into mid-1970s Australia, an esoteric era awash with boozy barbecues, barrels of bronzing oil, bilious fashion choices and bad taste as far as the eye can see.

Swinging Safari is Stephan Elliott's latest film in cinemas January 18.

It is such an incredible feat of period production design that you could almost classify it as time travel.

Unfortunately, once the need to tell a tall story about partner-swapping parents and their unhealthily unsupervised offspring kicks in, Swinging Safari is soon cut down to size.

The movie unzips its unfeasible tale and lets it all hang out in a bracket of coastal suburbia peculiar to this wide(lapelled), brown land of ours.

In a small residential cul-de-sac well back from the main drag, a trio of neighbouring families are living in each other’s pockets.

Whether it be out on the lawn, down on the beach or around the lazy Susan, this menagerie is always moving together in a blur of sideburns, perms, hot pants and board shorts.

Swinging Safari is Stephan Elliott's latest film in cinemas January 18.

The comes a fateful night of too much spumante and fondue. The husbands and wives of this colourful crew proceed from living in each other’s pockets to living in each other’s pants.

Life in their street will never be the same again. (Especially for the kids who accidentally catch a glimpse of these responsible adults behaving, ummm, irresponsibly.)

With an overabundance of garish characters and grotesque social misdemeanours drifting in and out of focus, the funniness becomes harder here to find than it should.

It’s certainly no fault of a gamely self-deprecating cast.

The carnally-inclined sextet of heavy-breathing homeowners played by Guy Pearce, Radha Mitchell (who gets all the best lines), Julian McMahon (who gets all the best clobber), Jeremy Sims, Asher Keddie and a deliriously dowdy Kylie Minogue keep Swinging Safari from grinding to a complete halt.

Swinging Safari features an all-star Australian cast including Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue, Asher Keddie, Julian McMahon, Radha Mitchell

Nevertheless, the whole thing is a faint let-down after that amazing start. Perhaps best viewed under the influence of more cask wine and beers in a tin can (not aluminium) than you would normally imbibe before a movie.

Originally published as REVIEW: Swinging Safari gets drunk on the spirit(s) of 1970s Australia with bonking and booze