Aussie
actor Ryan Kwanten stars in Not Suitable For Children. Picture: Tim Carrafa Source:
The Daily Telegraph
Nick Dent, The Sunday Telegraph, reports
It’s great that Aussie filmmakers are having a go at the toughest film genre there is, romantic comedy, and getting it right in the essential thing: likeable, interesting characters.
Hot on the heels of Any Questions for Ben? comes Not Suitable for Children, another rom-com about a young hedonist obliged to do some soul searching.
Jonah (Ryan Kwanten) has inherited a house in inner-west Sydney and shares it with buddies Gus (Ryan Corr) and Stevie (Sarah Snook).
On Friday nights the house becomes party central, at which Jonah enjoys strings-free sex with a range of admiring girls.
It's during one of these liaisons that Jonah discovers he has a lump. He's got testicular cancer. The treatment won't affect his sex life, but it will render him infertile and his sperm can't be successfully frozen.
The biological alarm clock that Jonah didn't know he possessed starts to clang. He needs to find a woman who will consider having his baby, and fast.
Not Suitable for Children is very accomplished for a debut feature but its director has strong credentials.
Peter Templeman's short film The Saviour was nominated for an Academy Award in 2007. Co-writer Michael Lucas has written episodes of Ten's Offspring and shows understanding about urban Australians and their emotional and sexual peccadilloes.
Kwanten is well suited to the role of a cheerful, impulsive stud: he's been playing one on HBO's True Blood for the last four years.
The film's real revelation, though, is Snook, who impressed in the ABC's Sisters of War but hasn't had a major film role before this. She's like a cross between Cate Blanchett and Emma Stone, both in looks and in her combination of dramatic clout and comedy finesse.
Despite disliking children, Snook's no-nonsense Stevie makes the decision to help Josh find a suitable mother for his child from among both his former conquests and her single colleagues.
To see her gingerly unstrapping Josh's baby nephew from his car seat, you would think she was defusing an incendiary device.
She's funny and unexpectedly touching, and so is the movie.
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