375:" at Barry's campaign launch. The girls' aunt Doris, whose hobby is making elaborate costumes for porcelain dolls, has a final confrontation with Shaz in her doll display room. "I lived!" Shaz screams, then pulls down her jeans and lights a fart with her cigarette lighter, setting fire to the room and the entire house. Then she races out the front door, kicking over a garbage bin, which has left her able to win in triumph.
469:"I came home from school and there was this strange woman rolling a cigarette, knife in her boot, dog beside her, and she said, 'Bit of a mess in here, innit?'" Hogan recalled. "That was the woman who took care of us … she pretty much lived with us, I remember, for six to eight months, even after my mum returned home, because they got on."
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The girls decide to break Shaz out of the mental institution. They tie up Trevor and help Shaz steal his pickled shark. Tortured by the gentle guitar songs of his guard, Trout, Trevor manages to escape just in time to intercept and reason with Shaz as she attempts to free the shark from its tank and
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Trevor reveals that Shaz is actually his mentally disturbed ex-wife. He tells Coral that Shaz is convinced the spirit of their daughter, who died in a boating accident, is trapped inside the giant preserved shark in Trevor's exhibit. Trevor is trying to move on with his life, but Shaz has repeatedly
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is so strongly unique, so difficult to contextualise, so easy to herald as a triumph of ballsy suburban dramedy or an ambitious dud." But
Buckmaster gave it a favourable review: "It is a bare-all everything-in-the-open film, and the way it encourages discussion of important issues without appearing
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accent, her dog Ripper and the knife she keeps in her cowboy boot, but she also encourages them to stand up to local bullies including their smarmy Aunt Doris, their snobbish, house-proud neighbour Nancy and the two mean girls who run the local coffee shop, who always forced
Shirley to eat unwanted
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Shirley
Moochmoore is a sweet misfit and mother of five daughters who are all convinced they suffer from various mental illnesses. Living in the Australian coastal suburb of Dolphin Heads and married to the often absent local politician Barry, Shirley retreats into a fantasy world of her favourite
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Shaz also encourages their eldest daughter Coral to pursue a romance with Trout, a hunky, guitar-strumming lifeguard at the aquatic theme park where Coral works for an eccentric shark hunter named Trevor
Blundell. Trevor had earlier disrupted Trout clumsily kissing Coral in the shark exhibit; but
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disagreed about the film. Pomeranz gave it four out of five stars, saying director PJ Hogan "walks a fine line between the grotesque and the compassionate and for me, he succeeds, painfully but gracefully." But
Stratton gave it two and a half stars: "For me it didn't work on almost every level."
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would entertain Toni
Collette with stories about the real 'Shaz'. "Toni just said, 'You've got to make a film about this woman, and if you do, I'm playing her.'" Hogan's sister also has schizophrenia, and told him, "You should put me in a movie. I want people to know what it's like."
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donuts. Shaz's philosophy is that the 'normal' world is insane, and so-called 'crazy' people are the normal ones. She leads the
Moochmore girls on a dawn climb of a nearby mountain. From its peak, they each select a stone to symbolise their newfound ability to overcome adversity.
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Director PJ Hogan based the script on his own mother's mental breakdown when he was 12, and his politician father's refusal to tell anyone about his wife's illness in case it hurt his electoral chances. As in the film, Hogan's father recruited a hitchhiker to babysit the family.
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refused psychiatric treatment and instead has followed Trevor to several new towns, working her way into the trust of locals each time. Barry calls the police to have Shaz arrested, and she is confined to the same mental institution
Shirley had been.
576:, Craig Mathieson was more cautiously positive, noting the film's "brash, consumptive energy that turns on everything from diagnosing mental illness and race relations to shark imagery and teenage affirmation. It is not a movie that holds back."
337:. After she manically orders a huge amount of furniture, telling neighbours her husband won it on a TV game show, she's sent to a mental institution. Barry, in his embarrassment, instructs his daughters to say she's "on holiday in
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reviewer
Phillippa Hawker wrote, "Collette's performance anchors the film: it has a fierce, uncompromising quality that gives strength to the film's two interwoven tendencies - in-your-face comedy and emotional distress."
368:'release' it into the ocean. The shark tank plunges into the water, its attached rope entangling Trevor's legs, and Shaz dives after it, ostensibly to save him. Neither of them surfaces.
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thanks to the confidence Shaz instills in Coral, Trout genuinely falls for her, and the pair spend a romantic evening together riding waterslides in the nude after the park has closed.
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on 18 August 2012 and was theatrically released in Australia on 4 October 2012. It earned eight nominations at the
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is a well-acted black comedy that suffers from jarring tonal shifts and a lack of comic discipline".
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last week, all I can say is this: I want my $ 100 back."
1071:"Mental movie review: crazy, good Australian filmmaking"
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399:as Shirley Moochmore
1296:Films about nannies
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868:Cinema of Australia
735:Best Costume Design
1204:Unconditional Love
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426:as Trevor Blundell
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187:Universal Pictures
174:Story Bridge Films
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979:. Rotten Tomatoes
957:on 9 October 2012
921:"The nanny state"
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261:$ 4.4 million
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650:Best Actress
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69:Jerry Zucker
65:Janet Zucker
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1176:P. J. Hogan
823:FCCA Awards
766:AFCA Awards
622:AACTA Award
507:Coolangatta
503:Tweed Heads
278:P. J. Hogan
237:116 minutes
59:Produced by
54:P. J. Hogan
45:P. J. Hogan
41:Directed by
1251:2012 films
1245:Categories
1103:10 October
1077:10 October
1054:10 October
1028:10 October
1005:10 October
961:10 October
930:10 October
904:6 February
879:References
855:Nominated
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640:P.J. Hogan
560:Herald Sun
545:, critics
511:Gold Coast
499:Evans Head
461:Production
454:Sophie Lee
339:Wollongong
306:infidelity
298:hitchhiker
258:Box office
220:2012-10-04
205:2012-08-18
167:Screen NSW
148:Production
51:Written by
1212:Peter Pan
951:Quickflix
748:ASE Award
610:Category
517:Reception
448:Sam Clark
444:as Sandra
436:Kerry Fox
373:Edelweiss
331:musical,
245:Australia
150:companies
127:Edited by
1073:. Crikey
1045:"Mental"
1001:. ABC TV
977:"Mental"
862:See also
613:Subject
509:and the
450:as Trout
438:as Nancy
432:as Doris
250:Language
137:Music by
86:Starring
1049:The Age
925:The Age
616:Result
573:The Age
495:Ballina
456:as Jean
253:English
242:Country
218: (
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1231:(2012)
1228:Mental
1223:(2009)
1215:(2003)
1207:(2002)
1199:(1997)
1191:(1994)
1134:Mental
1123:Mental
983:3 June
607:Award
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