Wow! Such a good movie.

the audience applauded

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Andi (Rita Artmann) is a singer in the punk rock band "Titanium Turdles" and not a very good one at that. When aliens attack Australia and only Australia, she believes it is because of her due to a close encounter she had 17 years ago, that gave her "telepathetic" (sic) powers. She leads an attack of family and friends against them that includes her nerd puffer brother Elliot (Doug Hatch), fighter Keith "cheap shot" Flynn (Lawrence Silver), Cam (Tamara McLaughlin) who operates a camera...and not too well, and John (Joe Bauer) who dies a lot.This is a quirky camp-fest film that was funny from beginning to end. The film pays homage to "Close Encounters", "Poltergeist", "E.T.", "The Fugitive" , "Star Child" and spoofs alien films in general. There are running jokes throughout the film which doesn't look highly on Tasmania.Guide: No sex or nudity. Seems like Andi says something that sounds like the F-word 3 times in her "telepathetic" mode.

Without even having heard of this movie prior to finding it, I decided to give "Australiens" a chance after I happened to find it by sheer, random luck. I read the synopsis, and it did sound like it could be a fun movie, sort of the likes such as "Black Sheep", "Shaun of the Dead" or "Undead".Sure, there were great elements and funny moments to "Australiens", but it didn't have that great quality like other movies of the same genre had, and as such then it wasn't an outstanding movie. It was a watchable and hilarious enough movie, but it just wasn't a movie that left a memorable impression.The story is about a group of fairly odd people living their ordinary, routine lives in Australia, when aliens happen to come to Earth to take over the planet. The group of unlikely heroes take up arms and make a stand against the alien invaders.This was a low budget movie, there was no doubt about it. Even a blind man could tell that from a mile away. But even as such, then they managed to get it all to work here in the movie. Even though it was low budget and questionable props and worse CGI, then it was just all comical enough to actually work in favor of the movie.The acting in "Australiens" was good. You know what you are getting yourself into essentially when you sit down to watch a movie such as this. But I will say that people were doing good jobs all around, and it was clearly visible that the acting talents were having a blast making this movie.As for the CGI effects and special effects. Let's just give them a thumbs up for trying. But getting down to business, then the CGI were laughable and very, very fake. The practical effects in the movie were adequate, albeit not the best of practical effects. But again, taking the movie and its budget into consideration, then what was to be expected in terms of effects here?"Australiens" is the type of movie that will appeal primarily to a specific target audience, and you must be a fan of low budget Sci-Fi movies and comedies in order to get some kind of enjoyment from "Australiens". I was adequately entertained by the movie, although my final rating settles on a mediocre five out of ten stars.

When I read the ratings for a movie I usually won't consider even watching it unless it has a 5 out of 10. Which this movie has. But let's look at the breakdown of that score. There are 107 votes. 23 of those votes rated this movie at a 10. Are you serious?? Not even Jaws got a 10, it only got an 8. Gone With The Wind only got an 8.2. So how in the world does Australiens get 23 people voting it a 10? Simple.... those votes are from people who worked the film. And 14 more people voted this movie to be a 8 or higher putting it in the same category as Gone With The Wind, and Lawrence Of Arabia (8.4). They all couldn't vote a 10 because then it would really look as fake a score as it is. So what can you do to make the scores fair? Absolutely nothing until more people vote. When you get up to 1,000 people voting, then you will see the reality of this film which should hover around a 2.5. Yes, it's terrible. It's actually painful to sit through. What little story- line exists is so weak and confused. Bottom line is there are aliens invading earth. And the main character was contacted or abducted, that is not clear at all. She claims the aliens are back to abduct her, again? And the other characters all try to stop the alien invasion. End of story, that's all they wrote. This should teach us all a lesson: never write a screenplay on a cocktail napkin and leave it on the bar to get wet. All the ink smears and you can't read a thing. The budget is listed at 20,000 AUD which is $15,294.00 US dollars. Certainly that money wasn't used for the actual film, but they had some really good craft services for a couple of days. Special effects?? There is one 10 second scene where they are interrogating an alien that is OK for the effects for the alien. But the rest of the film is horrific in terms of effects. What little there are, are so amateurish, they will hurt your eyeballs. OK, i get it. It's supposed to be a comedy. So it should be campy and contrived like Mars Attacks, (rated 6.3). But this film didn't even get campy and funny. Actually, there isn't one funny line in the entire film. It is void of comedy. It is void of sci-fi. It is just plain void. Let me put it as gentle as I can. If given a choice of root-canal or this film, I would pick the root canal, hands down.