It’s easy to think of Taika Waititi as an overnight success. It’s barely three years since the one-two punch of “What We Do In The Shadows” and “Hunt For The Wilderpeople” made him one of the hottest directors around, landed him a Marvel movie that helped him to reinvent one of the more difficult characters around in “Thor: Ragnarok,” and led to jobs involving “Star Wars,” Hitler and Michael Jackson’s monkey.
But for all his freshness, Waititi had a twenty-year slog to A-list status, taking in sketch comedy, TV direction, an Oscar-nominated short, a couple of features barely seen outside New Zealand and, most brutally of all, an acting role in “Green Lantern.” And credit to the director for not forgetting his roots and the friends who came up alongside him: the latest project with his name attached is “The Breaker Upperers,” which he executive produces, but is written by, directed by and stars Waititi collaborators Madeline Sami and Jackie Van Beek. And if its quality is any indication, Waititi was just the tip of the comedic iceberg in New Zealand.
Of the two, Van Beek is the most recognisable, having played aspiring familiar Jackie in “What We Do In The Shadows.” Sami, meanwhile, starred in and created the Waititi-directed TV show “Super City,” on top of acting roles in “Top Of The Lake” and “Slow West,” while both appeared in cameos in “Eagle Vs. Shark” back in the day. The Waititi connection is undoubtedly helpful to getting the movie exposure outside the Southern Hemisphere (as, surely, will its acquisition by Netflix after the SXSW premiere — it’ll hit the service sometime in 2019), but it’s forgotten pretty quickly once the film gets going: they share a comic sensibility for sure, but this is doing its own thing, and it’s brilliant at it.
The pair play Jen and Mel, two women who bonded after discovering that they were dating the same man. Since then, they’ve sworn off monogamy (except platonically, to each other) and formed a company that will, for a fee, get you out of a relationship that you no longer want to be in. Their methods are varied, but mostly involve faking a death or cheating, and they seemingly always, always work.
But things get trickier with a couple of cases soon after we meet them. First, Mel (Sami) forms a guilty friendship with Anna (stand-up comic Celia Pacquola), who believes that her husband has been killed, but in reality, he’s another satisfied Breaker Upperers customer. Then, she falls for another client, the dim but adorable teenager Jordan (James Rolleston, who starred as the titular lead in Waititi’s second film “Boy”), who paid the duo to be rid of his somewhat terrifying ex Sepa (Ana Scotney).
Leading with a synopsis probably makes the film seem more plot-heavy than it really is: there’s a pleasing looseness that nods to their background in stage comedy and short films, throwing more ideas than most comedies have in their entirety on screen in the first ten minutes. But it’s also deceptively well-constructed: Sami and van Beek’s screenplay introduces threads that feel like they’re just for a scene only to return to them cleverly later on (it also absolutely does not overstay its welcome at a brisk 90 minutes, which more big-screen comedies could do with learning from.
Arguably it’s got more in common with the likes of “Bridesmaids” in its tone than Waititi’s work, though it shares that particularly Kiwi sense of humor with the latter — dry, provocative, and progressive without shouting about it. But it’s got visual flair too, popping in a way that comedy all too often fails to, particularly from first-time feature directors (there’s one particularly great faux karaoke video section that pips “Deadpool 2” to the year’s best use of Celine Dion).
Most importantly of all: it’s funny. Really, really funny, consistently and constantly. The pair are a wonderful double-act on screen – Sami has to carry the bulk of the plot stuff and does so brilliantly, but van Beek is a crucial counterpart, the cynic to Mel’s romantic, and gets some of the film’s biggest laughs in her relationship with her larger-than-life mother. The cast’s full of ringers too, from one-scene cameos from Jemaine Clement and recent Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Rose Matafeo, to the winning Rolleston and Scotney, the latter of whom is a hell of a discovery and comes close to stealing the entire film away near the end.
It is occasionally a bit scrappy — the occasional bit or scene falls flat. And it does somewhat fall victim to the traditional third-act comedy problems when resolving the story takes precedence over the laughs. But on the whole, it feels just as much of a firecracker in the genre as “What We Do In The Shadows” was a few years back, and seems destined to be rewatched as many times, and launch careers for Sami and van Beek as big as their friend’s has been.[B+]
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