MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Around the World’ Is the Right Prescription

Farce, far from being sturdy, is the most delicate of critters. Through all its peregrinations, as doors open and close furiously and taxis screech up to precisely the wrong door at precisely the right second, farce must make eminently good sense, or the day is lost. And there is no denying that it isn’t everyone’s taste.

It is, I confess, mine--at least when it’s splendidly performed. Australia’s barmy “Around the World in 80 Ways” is certainly that, and once it gets its sea legs it is fiendishly funny farce indeed, and perhaps a little more: farce with a heart to its looniness. (It opens Friday citywide.)

The film comes from the certifiably febrile brain of director Stephen MacLean, who also co-wrote it with Paul Leadon. MacLean is already responsible for the screenplay of “Starstruck,” a giddy and endearing comedy with music, directed by Gillian Armstrong.

Like that film, “Around the World” has a real soft spot in its heart for older people. It loves their crankiness, their forthrightness. It hates rest homes, convalescent homes and other euphemisms with a passion that other people reserve for the IRS.

So it’s no surprise that “Around the World’s” central character must be in the middle reaches of his 70s. Roly Davis (Allan Penney) has been failing for some time, until, reluctantly, his much younger wife Mavis (Diana Davidson) takes him to a rest home, and herself on a world tour. The home is a depressing place, run by Doctor Proctor and his smart and toothsome fiancee, Nurse Ophelia Cox (Gosia Dobrowolska). Mavis Davis, Doctor Proctor--you do know you’re in farce country, don’t you?

Doctor and nurse are at opposite poles about the treatment of the elderly. The health-food-oriented nurse believes that stimulation and proper diet can be regenerative. The doctor prefers the steady income that a steady stream of patients--albeit steadily declining ones--brings in. Mainly, Nurse Cox wants a patient on whom to test her theories.

So when Roly’s two sons--the flamboyant Wally (Philip Quast) and his sound-expert younger brother Eddie (Kelly Dingwall)--march off with their dad from under Proctor’s nose, Nurse Cox somehow becomes part of the package. (She and young Eddie have also locked glances, significantly.)

The hysteria begins at this point and defies succinct description--like all precise farce. Let me just say that the sons (whose initial intentions are not the most noble) provide their dear, doddering dad with a world tour without leaving their Sydney street, and that from here on MacLean’s manic ingenuity never falters. With Eddie’s brilliant kaleidoscope of recorded sounds in the background, with props and weather changes and even smells, the nearly blind Roly is convincingly trundled from “terminal” to “plane ride” to “hotel.” Wally almost collapses under his quick-changes, but he sees to it that his father “sees” hula dancers in Hawaii, the Sands chorus line in Las Vegas, geishas in Japan and the Pope in Rome.

In a sparkling cast, Philip Quast’s Wally and Allan Penney’s Roly are exceptional. The rest are endearing to a fault, particularly the young lovers, Dingwall and Dobrowolska, and the nifty turn by Jane Markey as “Miserable Midge,” the meter maid.

MacLean’s enemies are vulgarity and middle-class complacency--the vulgarity that he meets on its own terms and vanquishes, hands down. His viewpoint is tart and irreverent. He had a nice sly choice of the music that fills the film (“Pineapple Princess” crops up at one point), and some of his humor is like Preston Sturges played at breakneck speed. But at its core “Around the World” is soft as nougat: It says that old loves are the best; that you can go home again, and that parents should learn to accept their children just as they are. And certainly, that home is where the art is.

‘AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 WAYS’

An Alive Films release of a Palm Beach Entertainment presentation. Producers David Elfick, Steve Knapman. Director Stephen MacLean. Screenplay MacLean, Paul Leadon. Camera Louis Irving. Production design Lissa Coote. Editor Marc Van Buuren. Costumes Clarrissa Patterson. Sound Paul Brincat. With Philip Quast, Allan Penney, Diana Davidson, Kelly Dingwall, Gosia Dobrowolska.