Indie kiwi flick - well worth seeing

Our most recent NZ movie is The Curry Munchers, a low budget indie about the immigrant experience in Auckland. To me it had the feel of many British indie movies I have seen and, although it didn't have the production values, because of its budget, my family, who have seen Gazza Snell, rate it better than that. It is certainly better than Predicament. However, it would be fair to say it is patchy, especially technically, and some of the "crowd" scenes reflect the low budget. But some things they pull off miraculously - like the TV show set up.

The script is mostly funny and subtle, and I'll get to that in more detail - but some of it is a bit over the top. Our biggest belly laugh was in a slapstick scene in which an unconcious person was transported around in a rubbish bin. Silly and unrealistic, but we did laugh and I have seen worse in better-resourced movies.

The strength for me was in the subtleties of the script (yes, the scipt is uneven, but when good, very good). The careless racism of the policeman who will not pronounce Indian names correctly, even when gently corrected, the patronising TV commentators pronouncing the name "Curry Munchers" not politically correct, the agonising scene whether the hero's father fails a job interview, and above all the poignant relationship between the mother and father. They are both struggling in their new lives in New Zealand and yet they are not communicating. If they would just talk ... but then the whole thing is about cultural expectations and how a new country can turn all these upside down.

Most enjoyable - go and see it. It's worth it.