The Dish film review

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THE DISH

With films like Priscilla Queen Of The Desert and ‘Strictly Ballroom, the Australians have shown a gift for offbeat, charming comedy that travels well. The latest example is The Dish which is based on the little known true story of a small town in Australia chosen by N.A.S.A. to assist them in providing live pictures of the Apollo 11 mission and Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon.

Parkes boasts a lush landscape, a colourful population, loads of sheep and the biggest satellite dish in the southern hemisphere. It was the latter that caused N.A.S.A to turn to this unlikely location. Erected in the middle of a sheep field by Parkes' ambitious mayor, Bob McIntyre, (Roy Billing), the dish is manned by a crew of three, headed by the conscientious and recently widowed, Cliff Buxton (Sam Neill). To assist Buxton and his two colleagues, the jocular Mitch (Kevin Harrington) and the shy and nervous Glenn (Tom Long), N.A.S.A have sent along the Al Burnett (Patrick Warburton) to keep an eye on things.

While the dish's crew cope with the stuffy Burnett and N.A.S.A data that neglected to take into account the fact that the coordinates for the southern hemisphere would be different from those in the north, Burnett too has to adjust to the Australian's more relaxed attitude towards things which include playing cricket inside the satellite's vast bowl.

The film's farcical humour matches perfectly the absurdity of entrusting one of the most significant moments in man's history to a bunch of inexperienced but enthusiastic hicks. With heightened interest in the dish, an over-zealous and inept security guard, Rudi (Tayler Kane) is employed. Meanwhile the mayor revels in his newly inflated stature as he welcomes a U.S Ambassador and the Australian prime minister, all the while relying on his young son to keep him informed of the more technical aspects of space flight.

Director Rob Stitch balances perfectly the humour of Parkes life, activity at the dish and the real drama of the Apollo mission, which is done through extensive use of archive footage. Although the humour is broad and irreverent at times, with the people of Parkes seemingly more interested in the problems of the astronauts' bodily waste than landing on the moon, it is done with a touching innocence in keeping with the era in which the action is set.