Nothing relatable about Palm Beach and its moneyed-up mopers

Aussie film Palm Beach invites you to spend a wine-soaked, whine-riddled weekend up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches with Bryan Brown and pals. Think long and hard before RSVP-ing.

Your mission from Palm Beach, should you choose to accept it, is to spend a wine-soaked, whine-riddled weekend up on Sydney’s glorious Northern Beaches.

Your host will be Bryan Brown, and for company, you shall join an exclusive entourage of mates, missuses and miscellaneous offspring.

What follows is a rolling group-therapy session for the biggest bunch of moneyed-up mopers you could ever have the misfortune to meet.

This beautifully filmed and sumptuously catered cavalcade of comfortable discomfort would be just about bearable if the acting, writing or direction could rustle anything relatable from the glam gathering.

Aaron Jeffery, Richard E Grant, Claire van der Boom, Heather Mitchell, Sam Neill and Charlie Vickers in Palm Beach. Picture: Universal Pictures.

Browny has the tent-pole role of Frank, just your average Aussie bloke who’s reaped a few squillion from the rag trade, and is unsure what to do with the rest of his luxurious life.

Perhaps a party to celebrate his latest birthday thrown by long-suffering wife Charlotte (Greta Scacchi) will force an answer? Don’t hold your breath.

Among those who have flown in via seaplane for the shindig are two fellas with whom Frank once played in a band back in the day.

Leo (Sam Neill) is a now a journalist of indiscernible repute. Billy (Richard E. Grant) churns out jingles for the advertising crowd. Leo has a slightly younger wife, Bridget (Jacqueline McKenzie), and Billy is partner to a slightly more successful actor, Eva (Heather Mitchell).

Let’s not bother listing all the grown-up kids in attendance. They’re a mixed bag — some enlightened, some entitled, and some a bit of both — that will only prove useful when an idling subplot needs a quick jump-start.

Taking a step back from Palm Beach, it is hard to understand exactly who this tale of low-stakes turmoil in a top-tier tax bracket was made for.

Old mates Bryan Brown and Sam Neill. Picture: Universal Pictures.

It speaks to an Australia where everyone is pulling down about 400K a year and the mortgage was snuffed out yonks ago, leaving plenty of time free to fret about first-world problems like whether Frank should install an outdoor pizza oven, or what to do about his neighbour’s chimney marring a sightline to the sea.

As Marie Antoinette might have said had she lived in Palm Beach, let them eat potato cakes.

MORE MOVIE REVIEWS

PALM BEACH (M)

It’s all a bit rich … and a bit on the nose

Rating: One and a half stars (1.5 out of 5)

Director: Rachel Ward (Beautiful Kate)

Starring: Bryan Brown, Sam Neill, Richard E. Grant, Greta Scacchi, Heather Mitchell, Jacqueline McKenzie.

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