NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD Review

Film documentaries tend to have two defining characteristics: either they're shot through rose-colored glasses and edited to depict the best moments and leave out all of the worst, or they're so completely focused on the details that they forget to have fun with the subject matter. Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (henceforth just Not Quite Hollywood) falls into neither of those pitfalls; Mark Hartley's film is often raucously entertaining thanks to a smattering of video clips, and it's not afraid to offer some deep criticisms of a crazy and sometimes dangerous time in Australian filmmaking. This is a documentary that jumps through time periods and genres, but Hartley divides the ideas up quite evenly: the film first takes a look at the burgeoning Australian film scene, aided by films with ample nudity and sex-crazed antics; then it moves into the splatter/slasher/horror films that were inspired by the dangerous Australian outback that helped make the movies an exotic success overseas; and finally it touches upon the action/car stunt/punk gang films that ultimately led to George Miller's Mad Max.

Hartley's direction rarely allows for long stretches of interviews; instead, he's spliced and edited bits and pieces together for a collaborative tale for each of the aforementioned topics. Not Quite Hollywood moves through films at a quick clip, but it does make frequent stops for certain movies that were of more historical importance than others. The documentary, then, becomes a roller coaster crash course of Australian exploitative cinema, interviewing the important names in the business (Brian Trenchard-Smith, Anthony I. Ginnane, Everett De Roche) while playing stylized clips from the mentioned movies.

The editing is what makes Not Quite Hollywood so fun, because it captures the best moments of these cult films - the nudity, the violence, the action. Not only does Hartley effectively capture the positive and negative elements of Australian cinema, he also does it in a fashion that makes inexperienced viewers want to go out and find all of the films discussed.

But Hartley also ensures that foreign audiences have a viewpoint in Quentin Taratino, here referred to simply as "fan." His presence is an interesting lens, because he experienced these movies after the fact and certainly had no bearing on their development. Instead, he gives glowing recommendations of inspirational films and shows how a typical foreign audience might experience Australian exploitation.

Overall, Not Quite Hollywood is insanely fun and, for a 99 minute documentary, extremely fast-paced. This is one both Australian and foreign fans will want to see.