The Adventures of Barry McKenzie

1972, Australia, directed by Bruce Beresford

The ne plus ultra of the ocker comedy, despite mostly being filmed in the UK: the titular character is the distillation of every cliché about the beer-fueled Australian boor, whose success with the opposite sex is confined purely to his own imagination, and who remains a rather childish character, essentially good-natured if completely unredeemed by any great social value. While the film purports to cast aspersions on Barry and his ilk, it also reveals its own essential conservatism and conformism in its treatment of the more socially transgressive characters that Barry encounters, particularly the queens and lesbians who make their homes in one of the many bars on Barry's itinerary. What does remain fun is Barry's inexhaustibly colourful vocabulary: even if the film makes rather repetitive hay with this, some of the expressions are quite wonderfully inventive and Barry Crocker has a terrific ability to string them together in increasingly frantic efforts to make himself understood. The finale is, well, unique in advertising the saving powers of a cold Foster's.