Munter lashes out over US film review

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Outrageous Fortune's Tammy Davis has lashed out at a reviewer for influential American film magazine Variety, who criticised a perceived lack of Maori content in Taika Waititi's latest film.

Reviewer Peter DeBruge was scathing about the Kiwi director's second feature, Boy, an offbeat coming-of-age story set in Waititi's East Coast hometown of Waihau Bay, which has just premiered at Sundance and screened to media audiences in New Zealand last week.

DeBruge described the film as a "let-down" and "like the poor cousin of Son of Rambow or Nacho Libre". But it was his comments that Waititi had "scrubbed away all culturally specific traits" that would have given his film an "arthouse-ready anthropological edge" with which Davis took issue, in a heated response posted soon after the review went online.

Davis, who is best known for his role as Outrageous Fortune's Munter, and is also the partner of Boy producer Ainsley Gardiner, wrote in a comment on the Variety website: "Peter, growing up Maori on the East Coast of New Zealand is not all riding whales. What culturally specific aspects were you missing? Were young Maori in the early 80s too busy learning to keen and chant and wail to be concerned with schoolyard crushes and the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson?

"Then I am afraid to say I am a let down of a Maori, because in the 80s this was all there was for me."

Gardiner, who returned from Sundance on Friday, told the Star-Times that Davis had written the response in collaboration with her, in an attempt to make the reviewer feel "a bit chastised".

"I wish we could say something to him but we can't. Tammy was equally outraged. It was a moronic statement," she said. "It's so far-fetched that this guy can suggest that Taika is out of touch with what was happening in Waihau Bay in the 80s. It's like me saying that new Zulu short film doesn't accurately portray the way Zulus live."

Gardiner said that "other prominent Maori" had been similarly keen to respond but she had urged them not to. "What we didn't want back here is for people to get the feeling we were up in arms about it. It was a silly review and it's been a real bummer for us that everyone back here is quoting it and saying we've got mixed reviews."

The film's reception had been positive, with a few exceptions, she said. Vanity Fair "loved" the movie, praising its "genuinely heartwarming and hilarious flights of whimsy" and comparing it to last year's Sundance favourite Precious. An Indiewire review called Boy "remarkably insightful" and "a step up in maturity" for Waititi.

But Variety, often referred to as the film industry's bible, has soured on Waititi since championing the one-time Oscar nominee (for Two Cars, One Night) as one of the industry's "10 directors to watch", labelling his debut feature Eagle vs. Shark in 2007 as close to "just tolerably amusing sketch comedy" and "innocuously mild".

Gardiner said the Variety review was "just frustrating". "Taika and I pretty much agreed that we don't care if people say negative things about our film because we love it. I don't know in general how New Zealanders are going to respond; I feel like they're going to feel pretty damn good about it. But I can guarantee a good majority of Maori are going to feel like it gives them voice."

* Boy opens here on March 25.

- © Fairfax NZ News