Tim Finn Movies

Co-produced by Britain's Channel Four and Australia's Seven Network, the two-part miniseries Kangaroo Palace was set in the "swinging" London of the 1960s. The story focused upon a trio of young Australians who'd come to Great Britain to seek their fortunes, establishing residence in a low-rent flat which they nicknamed Kangaroo Palace. One of the transplanted Aussies, Catherine Macaleese (Jacqueline McKenzie), was on a dual mission: to establish herself as a professional photographer and to track down her long-missing father. The other two flatmates were Heather Randall (Rebecca Gibney), who merely wanted to "party on" in perpetuity, and Richard Turner (John Polson), who'd bolted Australia to escape his irksome fiancée. Kangaroo Palace was originally seen in two 120-minute doses in 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Essentially a showcase for the talents of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, this earthy comedy tells the tale of a boorish and boozy Aussie ambassador and his wife (Humphries plays both characters) who are stationed in a Middle Eastern country. There, they end up saving the world from the bio-hazard engineered by the nefarious Dr. Herpes. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The ugly American bullying his way through a foreign country was a subject for comedy in several films of the 1980s, most notably Bill Forsyth's Local Hero and this film from exiled Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev. Eric Roberts plays Becker, an aggressive marketing executive for the Coca-Cola Company; he has been assigned to figure out why sales in hot and dry Australia aren't higher. Becker comes up against a low-key but formidable adversary, T. George McDowell (Bill Kerr), whose homegrown soda has cornered the market in his little corner of the country. Complicating matters is Terri, a local woman (Greta Scacchi) Becker hires as his secretary; she's McDowell's daughter and a single mom who's romantically attracted to the brash American. Becker wants to make a deal on his (and his employer's) terms, but he finds himself falling prey to the charms of life Down Under and the ministrations of Terri. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Director Bruce Beresford continued his tradition of putting socially disenfranchised characters front and center with this wryly observant comedy drama about middle class Australian teens that served as a stark contrast to the popular American teen films of its day. Friends from the Sydney suburb of Cronulla, Debbie (Nell Schofield) and Sue (Jad Capelja) are a pair of average schoolgirls who smoke, drink, have sex, and cheat on exams. The girls are also striving to become "surfie chicks," the groupies that hang around the surfer boy gangs of southern Sydney, pairing off with the objects of their affection. Adhering to odd rules that prevent them from eating or going to the bathroom in the surfers' presence, the girls get into trouble for their wild behavior, with Debbie eventually fearing that she's pregnant, leading to a fatal overdose of heroin for her boyfriend Garry (Geoff Rhoe). Ultimately, Debbie and Sue become disillusioned with the sexism and narrow-mindedness of their crowd. Puberty Blues (1981) was based on the book of the same name by Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, a pair of real-life Sydney teens who wrote newspaper articles under the pseudonym "The Salami Sisters." ~ Karl Williams, Rovi