Oddball: Shane Jacobson, fairy penguins and a dog

Animals are to the fore in a film that seeks to revive the Aussie family genre.

Oddball, which stars Shane Jacobson, is based on the true story of a maremma sheepdog who saves a colony of little penguins.

The success of the family film Paper Planes has pushed wind beneath the wings of local filmmakers.

The Australian screen sector has had a conflicted relationship with the family film genre despite the box office success of films including Babe, Happy Feet and Red Dog and the cultural resonance of films such as Storm Boy.

Much as we’ve tried, there has been an antipathy that has grown as US animation giants Pixar and DreamWorks Animation have dominated the school holidays and attempts at quirky Australian family films have struggled.

A couple of Australian family films will attack these school holidays with gusto though, emboldened by Paper Planes’ success earlier this year, and before that Red Dog, which strangely enough began as a hit with older cinemagoers before those grandparents began taking their grandkids to see it, or telling them about it.

Blinky Bill the Movie will be joined by a comedy that pushes many familiar, and most likable, buttons.

Oddball stars Shane “Kenny” Jacobson as Swampy Marsh, the Warrnambool farmer who helped saved a fairy penguin sanctuary on the southwest Victorian coast by camping his maremma dog on the island.

It has a hero dog, it has some beautiful coastal vistas and it recalls a number of much-loved Australian family films.

Its producer, Richard Keddie, says he can’t count the number of people who have told him they grew up on the 1970s South Australian classic Storm Boy.

“It was one of those childhood films that made me feel good about being an Aussie,” he says.

“And my kids haven’t seen any Australian films like that. There’s been an obsession about making films about how awful we all are.”

Keddie, who is closely aligned to politics with his telemovies Curtin, Hawke and the upcoming feature film Stalking Julia, also co-produced the musical romantic comedy Goddess in 2013.

He hoped that could fill the breach, and it did — for the few who saw it.

He says Oddball has a “much broader reach.”

“When I did Little Fish I knew 95 per cent of the population wouldn’t consider going,” he says of Rowan Woods’s 2005 Cabramatta drama, starring Cate Blanchett, which nevertheless earned nearly $4 million at the box office.

“This one, we want it to be a film you can take your mum and dad to and be entertained,” he says. “There’s a lovely feel about it. I have no expectations and lots of hope.”

Major Australian distributor Roadshow Films is punting heavily on the film, reportedly releasing it on more screens than the coming The Hunger Games: Mockingjay blockbuster.

Keddie says that has been determined, in part, by the enthusiasm of exhibitors.

“We’ve had a fabulous response from exhibitors,” he says. “Does that convert into box office? I don’t know but I hope so.

“I’m a sucker for a dog and the penguins are just such beautiful little creatures. Everyone went gaga at them on set.”

Keddie admits wanting to drag Australian kids back from the lure of the Marvel Studios films such as The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. Australian parents may agree. Certainly the true-life tale of a dog’s protection of fairy penguins doesn’t end in the destruction of a city or planet, as Marvel films do, but rather quaintly with a conclusion that recalls Scooby-doo.

And Keddie is aiming high too, noting it is 20 years since Babe was released, and “that was the last time we did anything like this”.

He hopes it begins to redress the litany of dour film proposals normally sent to him as a producer, as when he held a Film Licensed Investment Company licence to raise film funds in the mid-2000s.

“Not one script sent to me was positive,” says the former Screen Australia board member. “We don’t do happy. It’s only now that the word audience is not a dirty word.”

Oddball has been a long-time in the making. Stephen Kearney, formerly one-half of the 1980s Australian comedy duo Los Trios Ringbarkus, heard about the tale of the rambunctious Victorian egg farmer whose ingenuity saved a penguin sanctuary.

Various iterations of the screenplay didn’t quite get there as a satire about a local council aimed more at an adult audience, despite it fitting Marsh’s persona as the local rapscallion.

Among other things, he is said to have egged the local council offices with 1000 stale eggs.

“Oh yeah, he’s always having stoushes with the local council,” Keddie says.

“All I can say is he’s been great every inch of the way and he loves the film. I think he’s selling a lot more eggs and will sell more eggs.

“He’s one of those original Aussie thinkers; he’s an eccentric character and a great character, and it’s that spirit that drives a film like this.”

The addition of Roadshow and a couple more producers shifted the film towards a family comedy with a conservation message that celebrated Swampy’s achievement and “that made us feel a bit better about the world”, Keddie says.

And the goodness continues to spread. The use of maremma dogs has spread to sanctuaries elsewhere around the world, and the Melbourne Zoo is about to start a maremma program for their rare bandicoots.

The production also revolu­tionised penguin care, with five penguins lent from Sea World learning how to hit their marks, despite Sea World’s trainers saying they could not be trained.

“But we had to budget the island to be made as a set in a studio because you weren’t allowed to shoot penguins outside,” Keddie says with a laugh. “Can you imagine that?”

This weekend in Review Stephen Romei reviews Oddball