David Wenham’s new film is all spit, sadly no polish

I don’t like writing negative reviews, particularly of independent Australian films ... but at the same time I have to call it as I see it.

David Wehnham is Johnny Spit, a heroin addict and low-level narcotics dealer who is back in Queensland after living overseas for two decades.

The Australian crime comedy Spit is a sequel to Gettin’ Square (2003), which was a flop at the box office but developed a following centred on David Wenham’s thongs-flapping drug addict, drug-dealer character Johnny Spitieri.

Wenham was at the preview screening I attended and told the audience that this mulleted low-life crim was who people stopped him in the street to talk about. They were far more interested in him than, for example, Wenham’s Faramir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He also admitted thongs were not part of his personal wardrobe and so to become Johnny Spit all he had to do was slide into pair. For this audience member, that was the most entertaining and funniest part of the evening.

Spit, directed and written by the same team from Gettin’ Square, Jonathan Teplitzky and Chris Nyst respectively, is a silly movie, a vacant viewing experience. I didn’t laugh once – not even close – though, to be fair, other people in the audience laughed a lot. We each have our own funny bones.

I didn’t miss the jokes, which are applied with sledgehammer subtlety. I just didn’t find them funny. More than that, I think some of them are borderline insulting to new Australians from Arab countries.

Here’s the set-up: Johnny Spit, heroin addict and low-level narcotics dealer, has been living overseas for two decades, having fled Australia after everything went pear-shaped in Gettin’ Square. He was presumed dead.

Now he’s back in Queensland and he claims he’s clean. He’s picked up at the airport for a visa violation and sent to an immigration detention centre, where he teaches English to detainees from Syria and elsewhere, with a concentration on the meaning and usage of the word f..k.

When the same detainees go before the ­assessment board to see if they will be granted entry into Australia … well, you can guess the word they use a lot. For this viewer, it’s not only not funny but a bit demeaning.

On the outside, corrupt police detective Arne Deviers (David Field) and crime boss Chicka Martin (Gary Sweet) need to make sure Spit is ­silenced. “If Johnny Spit opens his mouth, you and I are f..ked,’’ the cop tells the crim, who replies in similar effing terms. Here we have two fine actors, returning from Gettin’ Square, in cardboard roles.

So we have Spit back home and still on the run. Indeed, him running up an escalator in his thongs is offered – twice – as a comic highlight. The baddies want to kill him and the goodies, the anti-corruption investigators, want him to dob in the baddies.

There are attempts to flesh out Spit’s character, mainly through his long-lost family, but they come across as awkward injections of sentimentality into an unfunny, unserious story.

There are also some attempts to tell the story of the refugees, mainly through a Syrian named Jihad (Kiwi actor Arlo Green, who delivers the most sensitive performance in an insensitive film).

And though Jihad, renamed Jarad by Spit, is the most interesting and engaging character in the movie, I can’t help but think why an actor who lives a bit closer to the Middle East wasn’t cast in the role. I think Wenham is a terrific actor. He and co-star Asher Keddie are outstanding in the recent television series Fake. This film shows, not for the first or last time, that you need more than good actors to make a good movie.

I don’t like writing negative reviews, particularly of independent Australian films, but at the same time I have to call it as I see it. With that in mind, if you want to see a great film that Wenham is in, go to Cosi (1996), adapted by Louis Nowra from his stage play. I re-watched it after seeing Spit as a sort of refresher. It’s an Australian comedy that is extremely funny and full of humanity.

Spit (MA15+)

105 minutes
In cinemas from March 6

★★