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The show must go on, even if the talent goes off
Being a feelgood film centred on a feelbad character, Clubland certainly has its work cut out from the start.
Whether it ultimately succeeds is very much down to the mood of each individual viewer.
Some will relish being put through the wringer of a failed entertainer's flawed personality, and feel they have rightly earned their laughter at her expense.
Others will be soured by a mere taste of her bitter-and-twisted ways.
As Clubland begins, life has already well and truly passed Jean Dwight (Brenda Blethyn) by. And yet, as it disappears over the horizon, she stands defiant, a metaphorical middle finger raised in the air.
Once upon a time, Jean had the makings of a star performer on the UK cabaret circuit. Then she had the misfortune to fall in love with an Aussie one-hit wonder (Frankie J. Holden), who dragged her Down Under and turned her into a single mum with two boys to raise.
These days, Jean is up at five every morning to draw a wage in a canteen, and away most nights inflicting her outdated (and somewhat mean-spirited) comedy routines on audiences in suburban Sydney leagues clubs.
Back at home, Jean's disabled eldest son Mark (Richard Wilson) is left to fend for himself while his younger brother Tim (Khan Chittenden) chauffeurs mum from one sad engagement to the next.
Conflict looms -- as does a reality check for one and all -- when the shy and suggestible Tim comes under the influence of a spiky new girlfriend, Jill (Emma Booth).
Not surprisingly, the controlling and conniving Jean feels threatened by the self-confident and sexually uninhibited Jill.
But is it because a mother is losing her son? Or is it that she's going to have to find another driver?
After a scrappy first half, the film does improve once the battle lines between Jean and virtually everybody else are clearly drawn.
Though Blethyn does a fine job of expanding and contracting Jean's capricious ego from moment to moment, it is the young and unheralded duo of Booth and Chittenden who are really holding Clubland together in its most telling stretches.
Not only do the pair cope admirably with the demands of a number of poignantly raw love scenes. Both also measure exactly what lengths it will take for a youthful voice to silence a screeching adult for the very first time.
© Herald Sun
