This insipid antipodean teen comedy didn't make much of a splash when UK-premiering at the Edinburgh Film Festival eighteen months ago - which makes the fact that it's now getting a very belated UK commercial release all the more perplexing. Perhaps the distributor is counting on the picture's ominous title drawing in the horror crowd - at Edinburgh, confused festival-goers wondered if they might be in for some kind of sequel to 1999's guilty-pleasure killer-croc B-movie Lake Placid.

In fact ‘Placid Lake' isn't a geographical feature, rather the dippy-hippy moniker bestowed by a pair of Oz flower-children - Doug (Garry McDonald) and Sylvia Lake (Miranda Richardson) on their baby boy. He grows up to become a teenager (Ben Lee) who feels the typical teenagerish need to rebel against his background. Which in this context means adopting a young-fogeyish look and conservative attitude: taking a job with an insurance company is all part of his ‘anti-rebellion' rebellion. But Placid isn't entirely square - he spends much of his time lusting after long-time best pal Gemma (Rose Byrne), a bespectacled bookworm with a kooky streak...

When Placid Lake first surfaced, the main selling-point was the presence of Lee - a successful singer-songwriter since the age of 14 (when fronting the band Noise Addict), the movie was supposed to catapult him to a higher level of fame. This didn't happen - partly because Lee is a nondescript screen presence, decisively outshone by his co-star Byrne. Since filming Placid Lake Byrne has reaped rave reviews for her turn as plucky slave-girl Briseis in Wolfgang Petersen's underrated Troy, and even emerged from the misfire Wicker Park with credit.

A safe bet as the Next Big Thing from Down Under (in the lineage of Kidman, Blanchett, Otto et al), Byrne is really the only reason to dip into Placid Lake - whose cinematography has the off-puttingly gauzy blandness of bad TV. Even the normally-unsinkable Richardson struggles with the stilted dialogue and lazy characterisations of McNamara's script, based on his own play The Café Latte Kid. He's clearly aiming for some kind of Rushmore / Ghost World hybrid here - but is equally clearly several leagues out of his depth.

Neil Young
21st March, 2005 (review written for Tribune magazine)

THE RAGE IN PLACID LAKE : Australia 2003 : Tony McNAMARA : 90 mins
seen at Cameo cinema, Edinburgh (UK) - press show - Edinburgh Film Festival

click here for Neil's original review of the film from Edinburgh '03