(1988, Aust, 104 min) Dir Ben Tenzen. Cast Susan Alison, Alan Mann, Jenny Bitz, Doris Cholcos.
Australian comedy inspired by the number of areas that declared independence in Australia through the seventies and eighties. Susan Alison is a city living girl who is unlucky in love with a low paying job when she sees an advertisement in the paper from someone called Wayne the First who claims to be the King of Free Creek. Though she’s never heard of the place she decides to check it out, following the directions on the ad on the appointed day and finds herself on a farmstead in the middle of nowhere with the three other women all there to apply for the job of Queen. Much to their delight Wayne isn’t some backward slob, he’s a handsome, if socially inept, guy played by Alan Mann and soon enough there are four tents in his yard… Of course word gets out and before long the news crews are there and then the busloads of other hopefuls arrive too. A quirky romantic comedy which manages to transcend the potential iffiness of the premise by sheer force of its likability and appealing performances it’s mostly unknown cast.
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