Take one moderately successful and generally funny TV show, add foreign location, 60 extra minutes of same jokes, a hatful of bumcrack and a pinch of bad low budget effects. Hey presto, you have Kath and Kimderella the movie version of the Kath and Kim show that started on the ABC a few years back. It wasn't awful but it wasn't great either. The movie length running time just does not suit this particular humour. It's much better in the 23 minute weekly show format where they can get in, get out and by next week you've forgotten that there's about 4 key jokes used each time.
The basic storyline is that Kath Day-Knight wins a trip to "Papilloma" near the border of Spain/Italy and takes her daughter Kim and her "second-best friend" Sharon when hubby Kel Knight refuses to fly and miss the Masterchef finals. When their accommodation in Papilloma is messed up, they're quickly offered rooms in the castle of the King who spots these 'rich' female tourists as a possible way out of the kingdom's money and political troubles. The girls have a ball as a real life fairytale unfolds, the boys back home realise what they're missing and head on over.
There were definitely laughs to be had during the movie, I quite enjoyed certain parts. Particularly around where Kath mixes up her words and uses the wrong words to describe things (be sure to look up "vajazzling" in the dictionary before you go if you don't know what this means, as it's used a bit in the movie in the wrong context). Also as a child of the 80s I really enjoyed the fashion and haircuts which were a nice slice of bogan chic/Australiana.
The pluses for the movie were Rob Sitch as King Javier and Richard E Grant (Withnail from Withnail and I) as the page Alain, and the prettiness of the guy playing Prince Juleo. There were a few good jokes in there and the pacing was pretty good. Downsides were the repetition of the same old jokes (it's nice, it's unusual, it's nice has really made it's way into the vernacular so it's a bit passe now) so that some of the meant to be funny scenes just kind of weren't funny. Marg Downey (a fellow D-Gen/Fast Forward alumni) had a weird cameo, as did Alex Perry, and the Prue and Trude characters just seemed superfluous. And Kim seemed to be even more of a bitch than usual unless I've just forgotten the show Kath and Kim.
Overall I'd suggest that you wait until DVD for this one. It deserves an audience because they have created something which has a soft spot in the hearts of Australians - both celebrating and gently mocking our culture and ways. But is it worth $17 bucks? Probably not.
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