Movie Review: BoyTown

Tough titties! Tough, tough titties!

BoyTown (2006)

Stars: Glenn Robbins, Mick Molloy, Sally Phillips

Director: Kevin Carlin

Writers: Mick Molloy, Richard Molloy

Plot: Boytown concerns a successful 80s boy band of the same name reforming their band in contemporary times in the hope that they can capture some of their former glory and that the fans will still be interested.

Dr. Z’s Opinion: Mick Molloy’s follow-up to his lawnbowling hit Crackerjack. This one is about a once successful New Kids On The Block style boyband from the 80’s who are now middle aged and working in normal jobs who reform for one last crack at the bigtime. Unfortunately, unlike Crackerjack, this movie just isn’t funny.

I like Mick Molloy but a lot of the things he does are either very good (Crackerjack, The Late Show, Martin/Molloy radio show) or very bad (The Mick Molloy Show, The Nation, that golf DVD), Boytown is more in the latter category although it’s not quite that bad. The main problem is the lack of anything really funny happening, there are some small laughs here and there but that’s about it. Another problem are the songs, while some of them are amusing (Tough Titties, Special Time Of The Month), the rest are pretty boring and they play a fair few of them throughout the film.

Acting wise the film is decent, Sally Phillips from Bridget Jones’ Dairy + Smack The Pony is good and Glenn Robbins is his usual dorky self. The movie also looks nice which is something not a lot of Australian made & funded films can claim.

I wanted to like Boytown but the movie just isn’t that good. It’s worth checking if you stumble upon it while watching TV but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it.

My Rating: * 3/4 (would have been ** but it has a really lame ending)

Extra: Apparently Tony Martin made a 90 minute mockumentary called BoyTown Confidential that was going to appear on the DVD as an extra but was cut at the last minute. The Molloy brothers claim that it was left off due to lack of time to get it ready and because they run out of pre-production money although Tony was prepared to pay the $5000 to get it done. The rumour going around is that the mocko was a lot funnier the the feature and that’s the really why the Molloy’s left it off the DVD. Tony hasn’t spoken to Mick since then, so a fairly crappy movie has caused one of Australia’s best ever comedy duo’s to possibly split for good, which is kind of sad.

—