7/10
Enough to give your local council indigestion
7 July 2005
Peter Weir is a legend of film making. Partly because he can create movies that have good solid plots yet is able to transcend those plots to give us something else.

So you want to see where he started see "The cars that ate Paris." I saw this on TV from a very bad print, I hope a better version has since been released.

In outback Australia there is a small town whose financial crisis has meant they have resorted to causing car accidents, salvaging the cars and selling the parts to make some money.

When one of the victims survives an accident and they decide to keep him we are given a witness into the fall of Paris as it destroys itself over the car.

A cult movie that has been turned into theatre in I believe the town of Lismore in Austrlia, it is haunting, quirky and perhaps a movie of its time and location.

But you see for Peter Weir the story is told not with characters, plot and dialogue, rather it is in the total flow of the movie. Here in his first movie the flow is at the forefront, in later movies it achieves a balance with the plot, finally taking second place in his later works.

The cars that do the eating (in a metaphorical manner) include a VW beetle covered in spikes. This is a favourite of fans, but personally I think it sucks.

What I really want to know is what Max Gillies (a comedian known to many Australians) is doing waggling his trademark eyebrows in this movie.

There is one reason to see this movie, it is you may hate it or you may love it. That is justification enough to take the risk and see it.
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