Who payed the critics

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Shirley Moochmore (Rebecca Gibney) is a mother of five suffering under her absentee cheating husband Barry (Anthony LaPaglia). She wants to be Maria Von Trapp with her kids. All five of the kids think they are mentally ill although maybe one of them actually is. Barry is the small town mayor of Dolphin Heads. When he sends her to a mental institution, he picks up hitchhiker Shaz (Toni Collette) to look after his kids. The oldest daughter Coral (Lily Sullivan) has a wacky shark-obsessed boss Trevor (Liev Schreiber) at the waterpark.Writer/director P.J. Hogan reunites with Toni Collette to bring an outlandish sensibility to this Australian suburb. As Shaz points out, everybody suffers from one form of mental illness or another. I like all 5 girls and I love Toni Collette. The start is a little bit problematic as we wait for the arrival of Toni. Her time with the girls is fun and quirky. It has an uplifting sense. Everything is going as expected, but the movie does take a turn into the darker side. I'm not oppose to the turn, but it is very jarring. And like other Hogan films, there is a couple of singalong moments.

OMG seriously? Are those review on the first page even know what a movie is? I'm gonna make a list on other movie that they giving 10stars and definitely gonna skip those too.I watched first 5min then and double the playback speed for 30min and then fast forward till last 10min and can confirm this is one of the worst movie of the year!!!I don't find any joke in it, its just a lame boring movie you should totally skip it.And IMDb need me to wrote at least 10lines? What a joke, even one line is more than enough, just skip it.

Outside of mad Max I'm not much of an Aussie cinema buff.Accents can be enough to squash interest for us colonials, but id like to ease concern. The Aussie tongue is thick enough to have you worried in the first ten minutes but not thick enough that you want to give up watching. It's a helpful bonus that most of the actors do an great job, and that always make acclimating to a different tongue much more painless. Certainly a watchable film from the wrong hemisphere. Also lily Sullivan shines. I was hypnotized by her. She's lovely, yet brilliantly normal, but intriguingly interesting. I spent half the film thinking, wow I can't wait for her to get to Hollywood. And I sincerely mean that. Shes got quite an enjoyable gleam about her.Enough of the schoolboy crush. The film itself was watchable.nothing bad about it. It had a few high points and some dull gray areas. Nothing wrong with it, just felt like 2 or 3 seriously funny parts would have taken it from 'worth watching' to a 'must watch' A good little change of pace for an American like myself. I thought it was a well deserved redbox rental.

i am making a list of every reviewer who gave this movie a positive review and marking them never to read again as they have nothing to offer me when it comes to recommending movies. i was shocked to find out that it was the same director as Muriel's wedding but i then read he also did my best friends wedding and on remembering that singing scene at the restaurant were they all joined in it made perfect sense.(i say a little prayer for you!CRINGE) i am just so glad i didn't waste my money and time seeing it at the cinema but i am sorry i read the first 2 pages of user reviews on this site as it is not until the 3rd page that the truth comes out. for the first time ever i nearly asked video ezy for my $5.95 back but its not there fault.