Never Tell Me Never

Embarassingly bad retelling of the Janine Shepherd story. Any connection with the travails Janine went through to learn to fly, marry and ultimately have three children is notional. The depictions of the some of the characters eg. Noel and Virginia, are so wide of the mark in respect of the real people involved as to be obscene.

Based on true events this film shows us Janine Shepherd's fight back after being partially paralysed in a car accident. Her dream was to compete in the winter games in Calgary, but such aspiration was shattered; she lies in her hospital bed knowing she will never ski again and will never have children. But Australian women have guts: she manages to walk again and even learns to fly light planes, and of course there is a very happy ending. Simple enough story accompanied by correct music score and good photography. What does stick in the mind is Claudia Karvan's performance; quite memorable; it is, without a doubt, the strong point of the whole telefilm, and as such makes it a worthwhile couple of hours. I was pleased to see a bit of the Snowy Mountains, but even more so when Robertson, south west of Wollongong, near the famed Kangaroo Valley, came up on the screen, and there was just a brief glimpse of Botany Bay with a giant aircraft taking off from Kingsford Smith Airport. Apart from that, David Elfick seemed content to imitate the standard telefilm formulas set down by the USA, who are the past masters of such things, so that you cannot help thinking that besides being a vehicle to throw Ms. Karvan into the foreground, there is not much to mention - except that the main secondary actors carried out their performances pretty well. Six out of ten, though Ms. Karvan is worth at least 7 ½.

I'm not from Australia, and I admit that I don't know much about Janine Shepherd other than what I learned while watching the movie, but, in my opinion, Never Tell Me Never is one of the best biographical films I've ever seen. No cheesy, 60's-70's-style "this is a profound moment, people!" music; an understated, effective performance by Claudia Karvan as Janine; and, overall, a solid movie that gets to the point without getting bogged down in the details (if the writers had decided to put in every single moment of Janine's journey, they'd still be filming!). Yes, other people who were involved in Janine's story weren't totally fleshed out, but the movie was about Janine, not everybody else and, again, there's only so much attention that can be paid by an audience before they fall asleep! I enjoyed Never Tell Me Never so much, I've watched it virtually every time it's been on TV!