Love Serenade

Amazon.com

This Australian comedy is wonderfully bizarre, in its story of two sisters in a tiny town who both succumb to the charms of their new neighbor: a lanky, honey-voiced disk jockey named Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov), who has escaped from the big city to spin Barry White records on the radio. As the two sisters, Miranda Otto and Rebecca Frith, embody both sisterly nosiness and solidarity, they unexpectedly find themselves competing for Ken's easily captured affections. The humor derives from the contrast between the sisters: one desperate and clinging, the other stand-offish--yet both vulnerable to Ken's strange (he has webbed toes) charms. Writer-director Shirley Barrett keeps the comedy low-key but consistent in a film in which even the owner of the local Chinese restaurant, a part-time nudist, is funny. --Marshall Fine

Description

Critics nationwide are cheering the wickedly funny and outrageously entertaining LOVE SERENADE! Though one is shy and the other is flashy and outgoing, the Hurley sisters are both lonely young women on the lookout for love! So when a slick, smooth-talking radio deejay from the big city blows into their tiny town ... and moves in next door ... it sets off a hilarious competition to win his affections! Provocative and lively, this sexy comedy treat delivers irresistible fun as these wacky siblings turn their lives upside down to get their man!

Customer Reviews:

Funniest Movie I Know.......2006-11-03

This is the funniest movie I have ever seen. The characters are well written and the plot does not easily give itself away. Watch it again for the foreshadowing.

One of the worst pictures I've ever seen.......2005-07-10

I only watched half an hour of Love Serenade, which was about 29 minutes too much for me. This movie was billed as a hilarious comedy, but I only laughed once in the first half hour. The basic idea that these two pretty young women, no matter how lonely and screwed up, would instantly become attracted to/obsessed with a repulsive, obnoxious man old enough to be their father just required too great a "suspension of disbelief" for me to buy into it.

I don't eat fish.......2004-12-31

LOVE SERENADE is an offbeat (I'm trying terribly hard to avoid the word `quirky') story of two sisters in a rural Australian town who find themselves in an increasingly acrimonious competition for the affections of the big city disk jockey who'd just moved in next door.
It's a tale of seduction, jealousy, and `wuv' played out between three compelling and convincing characters. At least they convince up to a point.
The last ten minutes or so contains scenes that are shocking and bizarre. The bizarre element, even though a hint or two is dropped during the movie, seems to have been inserted to take the sting out of the shocking element.
The core story, minus the strange stuff, was a plenty good enough movie for me.

Wonderfully weird, wacky, and funny to boot.......2004-06-23

I first became aware of some of the great movies coming out of Australia and New Zealand in the 80s, and this movie is one of my favorites. It's a very quirky, off-beat, and darkly funny film that probably won't appeal to many moviegoers, but it shows what a good script writer, director, and just a handful of talented actors and actresses can do with what at first blush seems very mundane and not especially promising material. The movie hinges on its intimate portrayal of the several characters and their relationships, set against the backdrop of the small, dead-end, Australian outback town of Sunray, west of Brisbane on Australia's Sunshine Coast. There are only four main characters in the entire film: the two sisters, Vicky-Ann and Dimity, the DJ, Ken Sherry, and the Chinese restaurant owner and nudist, Albert. The whole movie revolves around these four odd characters and their equally odd relationships.

The plot unfolds with the langourous pacing of a pitcher's duel, but the only real pitcher (more like pitchman) in the movie is the sleazoid, manipulative DJ, Ken Sherry, who pitches his cynical and self-serving philosophy of free sex and free love to the two inexperienced and naive neighbor sisters who are competing for his affections. At first charmed by Ken's smooth-talking demeanor, the three are soon involved in a bizarre love triangle, and the girls quickly find out that Ken is nothing more than a smooth-talking and manipulative cad.

Besides Ken and the two sisters, Vicky-Ann and Dimity, and their relationships, which would be enough quirkiness for any movie except this wonderfully weird black comedy, there's Albert, the nudist/philosopher and Chinese cook, who doesn't like Ken's unchanging roster of Barry White songs because they're always, as Albert says, "about procreation" (and tells him so). This is despite Albert's admitting to being a practicing nudist. Albert becomes obsessed with why Ken doesn't order his fresh prawns and only orders the beef with black bean sauce. Unlike the two smitten sisters, Albert isn't impressed with Ken one bit. Soon the story is enmeshed in a web of suspicions, as Ken is suspicious of Albert's prawns, Albert is suspicious of Ken's smooth ways with the women, and the two sisters are suspicious of each other's designs on Ken.

In fact, the subject of fish and seafood almost becomes another subplot, as the characters talk about fishing, the giant marlin on Ken Sherry's wall, go for a leisurely canoe trip on the local river, and debate the freshness of Albert's prawns. As if that weren't enough, Dimity thinks Ken himself is part fish--he apparently has webbed toes and she thinks he has gills on his neck which exude a fatty substance just like a carp! (This despite the fact that Ken doesn't like fish :-)). The two sisters have a blow-up when Dimity reveals her suspicions that Ken is really a fish. The movie opens with a fishing scene on the river and ends with another scene on the same river (which I won't discuss since it would ruin the plot, but it has to do with that infamous line from the first Godfather movie about Lucca Bratsi).

As if all of the above weren't enough, add in a striptease scene by Dimity, some frank nudity and sex, and what will happen with the two enormous and mysterious storage silos that keep appearing throughout the movie, and you have one of the strangest, quirkiest, and funniest movies ever to come out of the great and exotic land of Oz. This movie has the potential to become a cult classic although I doubt it'll ever get the attention and fame that it truly deserves.

"Would you like to come in and ease my loneliness?".......2003-09-14

DJ Ken Sherry (George Shevtsov) arrives in the small Australian town of Sunray to take over a tiny radio station. Ken moves in next door to the bizarre Hurley sisters--Dimity (Miranda Otto) and Vicki-Ann (Rebecca Firth). Vicki-Ann owns a hairdressing salon called the "Hairport," and according to Dimity, Vicki-Ann is "looking for a boyfriend." While Vicki-Ann throws herself at Ken, Dimity is standoffish. But Ken begins frequenting the drab Chinese restaurant where Dimity works as a waitress, and soon the sisters appear to be engaged in a nasty competition for Ken's attention.

When Ken arrives in Sunray, he isn't exactly a breath of fresh air, but he seems exotic to the Hurley sisters. Ken plays Barry White songs endlessly at his shack of a radio station, and his glib lines impress marriage-obsessed, domineering Vicki-Ann and virginal, dowdy Dimity. Both Dimity and Vicki-Ann become fixated with Ken--and his ideas about life, love and relationships. But Albert, Dimity's employer, philosopher-cook, and nudist, remains obstinately unimpressed by Ken's behaviour, pick-up lines, and music choices.

This film is not a romance--it's a bizarre and delightful black comedy. All the characters in this very small cast are sharply drawn, and the relationship between the sisters is--on the surface--normal. However, a real pathology exists, and Ken stumbles into it, and that's where most of the humour lies. Ken thinks he's really hit the mother-lode when he moves in next to the Hurley sisters, and he sees his actions as "setting them free." In reality, he unleashes them. If you like "Love Serenade," I also heartily recommend, "Walk the Talk"--an equally unusual and bizarre film by the same refreshingly unique director, Shirley Barrett-displacedhuman

Average customer rating:
PopFlix - Romance (Love Affair [1939] / Penny Serenade / Jane Eyre [1934])
Starring: Love Affair Penny Serenade
Manufacturer: Pop Flix
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Description

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Average customer rating:
Penny Serenade / the Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Double Feature)

ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0009HK4FA

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