Writer-Director Rob Sitch's The Dish is what you could call a high-tech rustic comedy.
Set in Parkes, New South Wales (Australia, for further identification), it reminds us that we owe our first glimpse of man walking on the Moon in 1969 to a satellite dish in a sheep paddock manned by Ealingesque boffins in cardies with one uptight American to establish links (and confidence) with Nasa.
It's a gentle self-satire inspired by history, whose uniqueness may lie in its place as the only Moon-landing from Earth that doesn't spend most of its time on US earth. All the cloacal facets of the Australian character have a low profile: toilet gags are limited to discreet wonderment at "how they do it" up there on the module; the Great Australian Cringe before royalty (or, in this case, their PM and the US ambassador) has pride of place in the Capra-esque census of the place. "The Yank asked for pretzels," reports the grocer, a bit unhinged by the exotic request. "Well," comes the reply, "it's a world event." The college band is still coping with "The Queen", and mistakes James (sic) Hendrix's latest for the US national anthem. "I wish it were," sighs the envoy. The VIPs act folksy, the plain folks act up: there's a felicitous touch or two as when the mayor's wife asks, "More tea, Prime Minister?" then, unprompted, tips a whisky bottle into the cup.
It's a tribute to the modesty and good-naturedness of a movie which avoids the mini-sitcoms that an American farce would have tipped it into, that genuine suspense is generated when a last-second storm looks likely to black out the Moon-landing and genuine sentiment is evoked when contact is restored in time and Parkes enjoys its nanoseconds of world glory.
A surprisingly sedentary-looking Sam Neill, as the satellite's manager, curls his personality round his pipe stem in a display of settled maturity, while all the rest are proving themselves true sons and daughters of the British Empire by colluding in one technical cock-up after another. The seeds of the Dome may be found in The Dish.
The Dish
Cert: 12A
