Joey Grasso is a hero in his own mind, and nothing will stop him getting her way. Some people might say it's so stupid- it's funny, but it's an enjoyable watch, just for the sake of the story. A "Dodgy" character quite a lot of Australians would identify with,, whether a close relative or even themselves, tries to make someone's dreams come true. While not expecting an epic- even though there are a few big names in the colorful cast,(which was a bonus);i found it had a good chemistry between the characters, and a down to Earth realism. I found myself living his despair at times as this film hit the nail on the head for so many people's familiar life experiences. Salvatore's persistence keep it going the distance. Well done!!
10 Reviews
Good film, if you walk out after 1 hour
pctune12 March 2001
Time line of the film: * Laugh * Laugh * Laugh * Smirk * Smirk * Yawn * Look at watch * walk out * remember funny parts at the beginning * smirk
Unfortunately, this movie has a good concept that it grinds to the ground.
Unfortunately, this movie has a good concept that it grinds to the ground.
Move in that other direction
TRiXnLOX23 August 2004
The protagonist in a movie as arrogant and selfish as this - among several other characteristics of a jerk to the core - is not a desirable, nor is it a common approach writers are keen to take. However like most quirky-like films, we are set up for something more. The suspicion of something significant happening is subtly fed throughout the film and bonus points are awarded for its not-so-typical protagonist, and when the storyline comes to a full circle. Although the fact that the movie finally ended could have been bonus points itself!
Unless it's for personal entertainment, would not recommend any writers approaching a story in film this way again though. We can only be irritated so much by a character that some people may be pushed to the brink of acting in the most insulting way possible: watching something else.
Unless it's for personal entertainment, would not recommend any writers approaching a story in film this way again though. We can only be irritated so much by a character that some people may be pushed to the brink of acting in the most insulting way possible: watching something else.
It's awful, stay away
timelord-314 March 2001
It's awful.
Pretty succinct review I know, but it has been a long time since a film has left me in such a bewildered state - wondering how the hell a film like that gets made.
The last time it happened was last years turkey 'Mission to Mars'.
Salvatore Coco is an ex-con - trying to better himself through self help videos, endless seminars and betterment courses. He lives by the catchphrases these courses expound.
He stumbles across a washed up nightclub singer, played by Nikki Bennett, and has an epiphany; his new career is going to be that of a talent agent - with the singer as his one and only client.
Financed by his gospel singing, paraplegic girlfriend, played by Sasha Horler - he sets up shop and tries to relaunch Nikki's career, with disastarous results.
'Walk the Talk' is the reason why Australians are so contemptuous of Australian cinema. It is poorly constructed, lame and way wayyy too long (111 minutes for a comedy that should barely have scraped the 80 minute mark).
Every scene is too long, and are very repetitive. The audience is not given a character to empathise with; a vital ingredient in a film like this supposedly about an 'underdog' giving it a go.
The downbeat and frankly poor ending comes at the end of 30 minutes of the most mind numbing dialogue and scenes that have you crying out for a power failure.
This film is a failure on all levels - made worse for Queensland audiences by its liberal and innacurate use of various Gold Coast/Palm Beach location; and its laughable use of Brisbane suburb names like Norman Park and Caboolture.
Pretty succinct review I know, but it has been a long time since a film has left me in such a bewildered state - wondering how the hell a film like that gets made.
The last time it happened was last years turkey 'Mission to Mars'.
Salvatore Coco is an ex-con - trying to better himself through self help videos, endless seminars and betterment courses. He lives by the catchphrases these courses expound.
He stumbles across a washed up nightclub singer, played by Nikki Bennett, and has an epiphany; his new career is going to be that of a talent agent - with the singer as his one and only client.
Financed by his gospel singing, paraplegic girlfriend, played by Sasha Horler - he sets up shop and tries to relaunch Nikki's career, with disastarous results.
'Walk the Talk' is the reason why Australians are so contemptuous of Australian cinema. It is poorly constructed, lame and way wayyy too long (111 minutes for a comedy that should barely have scraped the 80 minute mark).
Every scene is too long, and are very repetitive. The audience is not given a character to empathise with; a vital ingredient in a film like this supposedly about an 'underdog' giving it a go.
The downbeat and frankly poor ending comes at the end of 30 minutes of the most mind numbing dialogue and scenes that have you crying out for a power failure.
This film is a failure on all levels - made worse for Queensland audiences by its liberal and innacurate use of various Gold Coast/Palm Beach location; and its laughable use of Brisbane suburb names like Norman Park and Caboolture.
A Guy who believes all the motivational crap but winds up in the slammer
hexa-216 March 2001
Joe Grasso knows all the hype and nonsense of business, but is flogging the wrong product, a neverwas club singer with a lot of baggage. Sacha Horler as Bonita proves she is an ace actor. Some probs with the script however as Joe's verbosity needs to be contained. Perhaps this movie should be cut with compassion and intelligence. Ten minutes shorter could be good news. Still it's a good movie!
More Aussie finger-pointing
JMann16 July 2001
Warning: Spoilers
It's the same sort of unbearable, wretched character treatment as Muriel's Wedding and The Castle, although its principal character never achieves the same balance of being despicable and pathetic. Instead, it's difficult to decide which he should be. That is a predicament that doesn't get any help from the narrative structure of the film, which is overly long, staid, and conspicuously circular at times. The ending is somewhat flat, although it does suggest an inflection of romantic sadness that the misguided Joey seemed chronically unable to fathom throughout the rest of the film.
However, the film makes master use of the seemingly typical Australian film talent of finding the hypocrisies and shortcomings that make everyone human (as opposed to those that make people bad) and skewering them without any mercy. It exploits its flawed characters and is always laughing at them, no matter how seriously they're supposed to be taken. I usually find something of remarkable quality in most of the Australian cinema I see, although it inevitably causes me to groan and frown in a sense of uncomfortable embarrassment for the tragically bumbling characters and how the film's mean-spirited omniscience is roasting them alive.
However, the film makes master use of the seemingly typical Australian film talent of finding the hypocrisies and shortcomings that make everyone human (as opposed to those that make people bad) and skewering them without any mercy. It exploits its flawed characters and is always laughing at them, no matter how seriously they're supposed to be taken. I usually find something of remarkable quality in most of the Australian cinema I see, although it inevitably causes me to groan and frown in a sense of uncomfortable embarrassment for the tragically bumbling characters and how the film's mean-spirited omniscience is roasting them alive.
Nice dark comedy
moysant6 February 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This slightly dark comedy was wonderfully entertaining in an understated way. It reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine.
The plot seems straight forward, but it is anything but join the dots. A z-grade entrepreneur called Joey Grasso (Salvatore Coco) convinces his paraplegeic girlfriend Bonita (Sacha Horler) to lend him money to help aging has-been singer Nikki (Nikki Bennett) to become a recording star. Joey and Nikki first meet at a lame self-help group where she cries at a film about penguins (used as an example of following your dream no matter how many knock back you get, since penguins fall off icebergs all the time but just climb back up. I'd think the orcas would have something to do with it but I digress).
It all goes disastrously wrong for Joey, and Bonita and Nikki end up wishing they'd never had anything to do with him.
OK, there are some not so good bits. Bonita, the paraplegic girlfriend, is not well thought out - she is like three people: the Jesus lovin' churchgoer; the bitter girlfriend who hates God for making her chair-bound; and the doormat who keeps giving Joey money even though she knows she is more competent at PR than he is. Is Joey blind to his own incompetence or is he really a conman out to make a quick million using others? It is never clear, which also is a slight weakness.
The character of Nikki is a delight though. That's why I'm a bit extravagant and giving it a 9. OK, so I knew a woman just like her once - completely charmless narcissist who was going to be the next Whitney Houston but didn't seem to know, or care, that she was so rude to others that they ran a mile rather than hear her sing (like Nikki, she wasn't very good). I love movies about narcissists.
I was half-expecting the movie to end with Bonita becoming the next great church singer as a way to prove that Nikki might have done better without Joey's help, but it ends up somewhere else which was a pleasant surprise. But a movie that sends up self-help groups, evangelical churches, and RSL pension-Thursday with geriatric hip-grinding Casanova's singing 'Why Why Why Delilah', has gotta have something going for it.
It looks like a foreign (US or British) remake is on the cards (starring Carey Ewls) for 2006. Let's see how it compares.
The plot seems straight forward, but it is anything but join the dots. A z-grade entrepreneur called Joey Grasso (Salvatore Coco) convinces his paraplegeic girlfriend Bonita (Sacha Horler) to lend him money to help aging has-been singer Nikki (Nikki Bennett) to become a recording star. Joey and Nikki first meet at a lame self-help group where she cries at a film about penguins (used as an example of following your dream no matter how many knock back you get, since penguins fall off icebergs all the time but just climb back up. I'd think the orcas would have something to do with it but I digress).
It all goes disastrously wrong for Joey, and Bonita and Nikki end up wishing they'd never had anything to do with him.
OK, there are some not so good bits. Bonita, the paraplegic girlfriend, is not well thought out - she is like three people: the Jesus lovin' churchgoer; the bitter girlfriend who hates God for making her chair-bound; and the doormat who keeps giving Joey money even though she knows she is more competent at PR than he is. Is Joey blind to his own incompetence or is he really a conman out to make a quick million using others? It is never clear, which also is a slight weakness.
The character of Nikki is a delight though. That's why I'm a bit extravagant and giving it a 9. OK, so I knew a woman just like her once - completely charmless narcissist who was going to be the next Whitney Houston but didn't seem to know, or care, that she was so rude to others that they ran a mile rather than hear her sing (like Nikki, she wasn't very good). I love movies about narcissists.
I was half-expecting the movie to end with Bonita becoming the next great church singer as a way to prove that Nikki might have done better without Joey's help, but it ends up somewhere else which was a pleasant surprise. But a movie that sends up self-help groups, evangelical churches, and RSL pension-Thursday with geriatric hip-grinding Casanova's singing 'Why Why Why Delilah', has gotta have something going for it.
It looks like a foreign (US or British) remake is on the cards (starring Carey Ewls) for 2006. Let's see how it compares.
dinomyte!
Hereafter11 November 2007
Shirley Barrett has a way of hooking into personality quirks and waving them about shamelessly on a silver screen to brilliant effect. Walk the talk is no exception. Consistently amusing and occasionally, absolutely hilarious. The "dinomyte, sorry, "dynamite" scene has to be one of the most beautifully setup, laugh out loud hilarious sequences I have seen in many years. Walk the talk is ultimately an insightful and oddly sensitive look at the ground dwellers of the entertainment industry, people desperate and aching for that big break but are doomed to mediocrity.
Maybe because Salvatore Coco's character, the affectionately annoying Joey Grasso was so strong and omnipresent throughout the story that it made the experience less rich than Shirley Barrett's first feature 'Love Serenade', but Walk the Talk is well worth seeing and has the director's signature plot diversions and observations that make it art.
And hey, for those of you that have seen it, Joey Grasso has not given up yet- www.nikkibennett.com :)
7 out of 10
Maybe because Salvatore Coco's character, the affectionately annoying Joey Grasso was so strong and omnipresent throughout the story that it made the experience less rich than Shirley Barrett's first feature 'Love Serenade', but Walk the Talk is well worth seeing and has the director's signature plot diversions and observations that make it art.
And hey, for those of you that have seen it, Joey Grasso has not given up yet- www.nikkibennett.com :)
7 out of 10
Avoid the Gold Coast; see this film
Spleen9 August 2000
Warning: Spoilers
Joey Grasso is one of the most despicable human (loosely speaking) beings you're likely to meet. He's an ignorant, power-of-positive-thinking, success-worshipping bullsh't artist. Yet I found myself feeling keenly sorry for him - even before I think I was meant to (although not much before). The MATERIALS of a decent human being are all there, surely. Writer/director Barrett was wise not to allow Joey to belong to any particular cult of success, or any particular cult, period; he's all the more pitiable because he his mind has been eaten away from within, and he hasn't been compensated by being allowed to belong to anything.
I'm tempted to say that the how-to-succeed-in-nothing-in-particular cant of the late twentieth century is mercilessly parodied, but of course it isn't. It CAN'T be parodied. It can only be quoted. It is, all the same, the film's only source of comedy. Apart from this "Walk the Talk" looks very much like a downer, but I didn't find it so: partly because it's so well written and acted (I haven't been so pleasantly surprised by a film's quality in a long while); partly, I think, because there's something cheering in the way pockets of honest humanity manage to survive in environments hostile to them. It's difficult not to love Joey's girlfriend Bonita, for instance. She's deluded in more ways than one, and she never comes very close to removing the scales from her eyes, but all the same she's a much stronger character than you might think: nothing about her misplaced trust will make you feel impatient with her, I promise. She's the only character we're NEVER invited to laugh at. (Sacha Horler - yet another Australian actress who looks beautiful, but completely different, in each film - gives the best performance of all the cast. I'm tempted to think Australia has the best young actresses in the world.) SPOILER ALERT This otherwise quietly perfect film is let down by its ending. The final scene - a fantasy vision of Joey's - isn't bad, but it's the only scene in the film that can be described as laboured; it certainly isn't a good enough scene to finish on. And it's unsatisfying not to be told or given any indication what happens to Bonita. (The penultimate scene, which features Bonita, isn't particularly satisfying, either.) HER fate, after all, matters more than anyone else's. (I'm not saying SHE matters more, although she may; her FATE matters more.) Still, up until about seven minutes or so before the end, I was entirely delighted.
I'm tempted to say that the how-to-succeed-in-nothing-in-particular cant of the late twentieth century is mercilessly parodied, but of course it isn't. It CAN'T be parodied. It can only be quoted. It is, all the same, the film's only source of comedy. Apart from this "Walk the Talk" looks very much like a downer, but I didn't find it so: partly because it's so well written and acted (I haven't been so pleasantly surprised by a film's quality in a long while); partly, I think, because there's something cheering in the way pockets of honest humanity manage to survive in environments hostile to them. It's difficult not to love Joey's girlfriend Bonita, for instance. She's deluded in more ways than one, and she never comes very close to removing the scales from her eyes, but all the same she's a much stronger character than you might think: nothing about her misplaced trust will make you feel impatient with her, I promise. She's the only character we're NEVER invited to laugh at. (Sacha Horler - yet another Australian actress who looks beautiful, but completely different, in each film - gives the best performance of all the cast. I'm tempted to think Australia has the best young actresses in the world.) SPOILER ALERT This otherwise quietly perfect film is let down by its ending. The final scene - a fantasy vision of Joey's - isn't bad, but it's the only scene in the film that can be described as laboured; it certainly isn't a good enough scene to finish on. And it's unsatisfying not to be told or given any indication what happens to Bonita. (The penultimate scene, which features Bonita, isn't particularly satisfying, either.) HER fate, after all, matters more than anyone else's. (I'm not saying SHE matters more, although she may; her FATE matters more.) Still, up until about seven minutes or so before the end, I was entirely delighted.
Well observed but ultimately bland telling of intriguing story
greeny-1010 May 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Shirley Barrett's previous film "Love Serenade" is one of my favourite Australian films of recent times and so I looked forward to "Walk the Talk". It has the same beautiful sense of it's milieu and well rounded characters, the only problem is this time around they don't seem to be caught up in an interesting story. The Fairlie Arrow "kidnapping" which this film is loosely based on could have been turned into a crackling good story but it's a story that would actually benefit from broader charactertures than the ones on display here. The characters in this film are ones that you normally see played very broadly; the deluded self help junkie, the vacant wanna be star, the evangelist, the noble girl in a wheelchair, the crusty old club singer. It's refreshing to see them played with a lot of depth; you feel for all the characters in this film. So it's enjoyable enough letting yourself get drawn into the world they inhabit, and it's a meticulously crafted world, but there's just not enough going on. I didn't mind that the central character was not essentially likable, though I found his sudden violence at the end hard to justify and jarring, it wasn't very well set up. Outside of the almost forgotten "Goodbye Paradise", Australia's Gold Coast hasn't been used very well as a movie location, which is a shame because it's Vegas like collection of hucksters, dreamers and down at the heels is crying out to be exploited in a big way.
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