The Sum of Us Directors: Kevin Dowling and Geoff Burton

Rip It Up, Issue 210, 1 February 1995, Page 38

The Sum of Us Directors: Kevin Dowling and Geoff Burton

Harry Mitchell (Jack Thompson) and his son Jeff (Russell Crowe) are a sort of odd couple, united in their quest for love; but Harry is looking for a woman, Jeff for someone of his own sex.

The Sum of Us bubbles along entertainingly enough. Perhaps there are a few too many deathless quips (“Life would be pretty shitty without plumbers,” is just one) and Jack Thompson’s Shirley Valentine-style confidences to the camera very quickly get tiresome, but the film is undeniably general-audi-ence-friendly. The movie has already received some flak across the Tasman for its exteriorised view of gay life, and certainly all the minor characters are pretty ineffectual. Jeff’s love interest Greg (John Polson) has a Mum and Dad sketched in broad enough strokes to go straight into Fast Forward; Harry’s computer date, Joyce, spunkily played by Deborah Kennedy, is never allowed to come fully to terms with either Jeff’s gayness or Harry’s health crisis. Where The Sum of Us touches the heart is in the black-and-white flashbacks that criss-cross the film. They tell the story of Jeff’s Gran and her relationship with her lover Mary, right through to their wrenching separation in the last weeks of their lives. Alas, they make the rest of the movie look like the cutesy Broadway play it once was.

WILLIAM DART