Kangaroo (2025) – Movie Review

TL;DR – This is a profoundly Australian film, and in that I mean more its structure than the narrative. But once it gets going, you can’t help but get caught up in the charm, because it has it in spades.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to see this film.

Joeys.

Kangaroo Review Introduction

While Australia is known as a place where big-budget films come to film, where you can walk down the street of Brisbane one day and suddenly it is New York for Thor. However, we also have a vibrant domestic film culture, or we do at the moment, looking at you politicians not doing enough to support the local industry. However, there are times when you could tell a film is Australian, even if no sound of an accent passed your ears, and today’s film is a good example of this.  

So, to set the scene, Chris Masterman (Ryan Corr) is the local weather reporter for Channel 6’s Rise and Shine Australia. He wants to be more than the person they cut to in the morning when they need someone to get a bucket of water thrown at them. But no one takes him seriously. Well, Chris is going to change that when the opportunity to go viral presents itself. Unfortunately, it blows up so spectacularly in his face that not only is he not up for promotion, but he is fired and put on the instant reject list for every production team in Sydney and beyond. He has one shot to get his career back on track, and that is to drive to Broome and do some regional work. But when his car accidentally hits a kangaroo on the outskirts of Silver Gum, he is stuck in the small town waiting for his car to be fixed, but also looking after a now orphaned joey with the help of Charlie (Lily Whiteley).

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TV Review – Mystery Road: Season One

TL;DR Mystery Road is a mystery ‘who done it’ where every reveal has weight and you have to watch every episode just to see what happened next.

Score – 4.5 out of 5 stars

Mystery Road

Review

Australian TV is kind of going through a period of uncertainty, how does it adapt to a changing global marketplace where streaming services are the new norm, or to governments that do not feel like supporting the arts is a good thing any more. Indeed, when you look at the list of currently running drama series in Australia it is almost anaemic compared to even ten years ago. Within this world, it is an unfortunate reality that you have to make each chance count, and with today’s Mystery Road we have a show that does just that. Now before we move onto the review proper just a couple of points. Firstly, this is based off a series of films created by Ivan Sen that I have unfortunately not seen, however, if you are like me in this regard, don’t worry because anything you do need to know about them is told in the show so you are not missing out. As well as this, we will be looking at the series as a whole so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead, but we will leave discussions about the final episode to a paragraph all to itself so you can skip that if you don’t want to find out the conclusion.

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