Australian Movie Satire At Its Best

(or "Worst", it all depends on your taste).

Yahoo Serious (yes, that's his real name) hit a home run with Young Einstein in 1988.

Five years later he followed it up with a flop called Reckless Kelly.

This half hearted attempt at comedy set another historical figure in its sights: Ned Kelly.

While Serious's first foray into a feature length film was a hit, this time it was a definite miss.

It would take another ten years before a decent film based on the skewed legend of Ned Kelly was released to thepublic. In 2003 Abe Forsythe wrote, directed and starred in Ned.

Its release (in Australia) coincided with that of the Heath Ledger/Orlando Bloom Ned Kelly film. Well a coule of months later to be exact, but it certainly wouldn't have suffered from the extra exposure that the Ned Kelly theme was getting at the time.

The film was irreverant, loosely based on events that defined the popularfolklore, and completely politically incorrect. If you toilet humour is your taste you'll find it by the bucket load. In fact I was pretty close to wetting myself in some scenes.

Abe's character is clumsy and bumbling yet still completely likeable. The brothel scene crosses the lines of good taste several times, but made the film all the better for it (no sex or nudity, but it still manages to get indecent).

Governor Sinclair is a highlight. If the other cast of characters managed to drag good taste over the line then Felix Williamson's character grabs with both hands and flings it into way out of bounds.

Some subtle references to television shows such as Mr Ed and also Hey Dad (Nudge makes a cameo which will be lost on those under the age of twenty-something but not distracting enough to make them lose track of the flow of the storyline).

American audiences may not understand or relate to the unfamiliar story but if they've seen Ned Kelly (starring Heath Ledger) they may still enjoy and appreciate this lighter look.

An interesting bit of cinema history trivia is that the story of Ned Kelly was in fact the basis of the very first feature length film made in the world.

97 years earlier The Story Of the Kelly Gang made its controversial premiere in Melbourne, Australia.

Controversial, because those with conservative taste at the time believe it to glorify the unlawful behaviour of the Kelly Gang.

Ned, is of course worlds away from the original. But given the way it handled the subject matter I'm sure that it would have ended up being banned in just as many theater's like the original back in the day.