Search - Doing Time for Patsy Cline on DVD

The Soundtrack is GREAT, the rest of the film is a letdown.

Steven I. Ramm | Phila, PA USA | 10/09/2007

(2 out of 5 stars)

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Country music is probably even more popular outside the US so it's no wonder that this 1997 film came from Australia. I'm a big fan of "Classic Country" music (before all the "hat acts") and was really looking forward to this film.

Either the writer, producer and director (all the same guy) made a couple of different films and edited them together or he made one film that is disjointed and seems to go in 3 different directions at once. One minute or "hero" - played by Matt Day - is stuck in a prison with a bunch of crazed killers in Sydney Australia and the next he's making a recording in Nashville. And then back to the prison and then back to Nashville. He has (and then doesn't have) a romantic relationship with a girl named Patsy (named for Patsy Cline), who is (or isn't) interested in being a country music star.

The performances by the actors - especially Richard Roxburg in the same bipolar mode as Ray Liotta in Jonathan Demme's "Something Wild" (a big favorite of mine) - is good but the changes in the story line will drive you batty.

Both Day and Miranda Otto (who plays Patsy) sing their own songs - and Day wrote one himself. And their voices are great. In fact the songs in the movie make one wish that there were a "soundtrack" option on this DVD so you could hear just the songs. But there isn't.

So, as much as I wanted to like this film - which won a bunch of Australian Film Festival awards (including, of course, for best score!) - I can't really recommend it.

Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"


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