The problem with Swinging Safari isn’t that its a bad film (because it isn’t), but because it has so much going for it, yet it wastes all of it. The director is Stephan Elliot, who directed the cult classic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, it has a great cast composed of some of Australia’s best talents, and a story that would appear to be entirely resonant for an entire generation of people around the world. Yet, it squanders nearly every bit of potential it had, becoming a convoluted, often incoherent muddle of contradictions and confusing storytelling that seems to have a specific concept of where it wants to go, but loses itself along the way. I wanted to like Swinging Safari – on the surface it has a great deal of potential, but I just couldn’t abide by this film, because despite moments of great charm, it just fails to bring together a story that is nearly as compelling as it should be, and it fails to incite even a fragment of the joy it attempts to. In short, Swinging Safari is not entirely awful, but it is unfortunately deeply mediocre, and never comes close to achieving the true resonance of the sum of its parts.

Swinging Safari is set in the 1970s, in suburban Australia. It focuses on three families living alongside each other on an ordinary street. Over the years, they have become quite close – their children have grown up together, and the parents have become close friends through their proximity with each other. Perhaps they have become too close, as one fateful evening proves to be the possible end of their friendship, when the three couples partake in a sleazy bout of swinging, which raises all sorts of moral questions, especially considering these are adults who have the mentalities of teenagers and considering they are parents to nearly a dozen children in total, they realize they need to start acting accordingly. The film is told from the perspective of Jeff Marsh, the teenage son of one of the couples, who narrates his experiences during the 1970s, chronicling the trials and tribulations of the dysfunctional families, as well as his own coming-of-age tale in a time when the world was in rapid flux, and romance was starting to brew for Jeff and his neighbour, Melly, who find themselves drawn together. Under the hot sun, and beneath the corpse of a beached whale (which is a major plot point, for some reason), the families begin to atone for their past mistakes and begin mature, both physically and mentally, and there just might be hope that they will make it out of the tumultuous 1970s without too much of a ruckus.

Where to start with Swinging Safari? First of all, it would be pertinent to mention the cast, because that is perhaps the main reason why this film has been somewhat notable. It stars an array of Australian talent, some of which are giving exceptionally funny performances. Guy Pearce returns to the same outlandish roots from the beginning of his career with Keith Hall, a platinum-blonde, handlebar-moustache wielding sycophant who enjoys terrorizing his community with his drunken antics and inappropriate comments. Pearce gave arguably his finest early-career performance in Elliot’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, so to see him return to a similarly-outrageous character was a treat. However, his performance was not nearly as entertaining here, and while it certainly was a surprisingly different turn for Pearce, who has built his career on more likeable characters, it didn’t allow him much space to give a fully-decent performance. Pop goddess and general cultural icon Kylie Minogue is in this film, turning in quite an impressive performance as Kay, a woman with issues that she never dares air, repressing them in her attempts to appear normal. Minogue is great fun in the film, and to see her in a role that is the complete opposite of the glamorous, confident persona she has exuded for her entire career was certainly interesting. Yet, it wasn’t particularly great, and most of her performance comes at the expense of her status as a pop icon because her unglamorous, unlikable performance is more of a novelty than something noteworthy as a performance. Julian McMahon, whose career never really made much of an impact after the end of Nip/Tuck and the failed Fantastic Four films, gives perhaps the only decent performance in this film as the very embodiment of male chauvinism and hopeless misogyny, turning in a performance as a man who we love to hate, and he certainly succeeds. Jeremy Sims and Radha Mitchell are also serviceable in the film, albeit not to the point where their performances linger, but they’re good for a laugh or two – which is already generous for this film as a whole.

The problem with Swinging Safari is that it is a film centred entirely around a band of hopelessly unlikable characters, and this would be alright if they were actually well-composed and had some sort of coherent narrative behind them. Understandably, Elliot is attempting to make a film that represents the 1970s in a way that was honest, showing it in all its grotesque glory. Yet, the tone of the film is so heightened, none of these characters has the gravitas to appear real in any way. The adults are presented as villainous caricatures of neglectful, immature parents, and while they are initially entertaining, having to endure them for the entirety of this film is a chore, and ends up being far more irritating than it is entertaining. Yet, we can at least admit that the film succeeded in portraying these adults as genuinely terrible people, and while the characters were unlikable, the performances were at least passable. The problem comes in the performances that are supposed to be endearing and likeable but end up being just as unlikable. The protagonist of the story is Jeff Marsh, played by Atticus Robb, who seems to not realize that he is the main character in this story, and comes across as awkward and stilted throughout, and the same can be said for his love interest played by Darcey Wilson. Both performances are supposed to be the grounding factors, the elements that lend this film some semblance of normalcy and make it appear to be a coming-of-age story – yet, both characters are hopelessly underwritten, and don’t do anything worth noting, other than being pawns to their parents’ malicious and immature schemes. We are supposed to care about these characters, yet they are hopelessly neglected, being shown with almost uncomfortable disregard. However, at least they had some characterization – there are nearly a dozen children between these families, and with the exception of Jeff and Melly, none of them is even remotely given any deserving attention, and they are positioned as a homogenous mass of childish naivete, and this is a great disservice, because there was certainly some promise in this cast.

For a film about growing up, Swinging Safari is surprisingly dismissive of all the elements that make those kinds of films memorable. It isn’t clear throughout the entirety of the film who it is about – is it about the children, or is it about the adults? The logical conclusion could be that it is about both – and this would be quite a fascinating concept, looking at the 1970s through the lens of a set of children, and their immature parents, with all the characters undergoing some form of growth after periods of great juvenile childishness. Unfortunately, this idea is entirely dismissed through narrative incoherency, and some truly lazy plot choices – the film sets up these families as distinct individuals, and then promptly fails to follow through on these intricate ideas by putting them in a set of implausible, heightened circumstances, and resolving all the issues in a way that felt rushed and unnecessary. Swinging Safari seems to have started as a great idea, stretched into a poor work that just doesn’t hold much relevance, not to mention the attempts to ground this film in some grander theme – such as the beached whale that is the centrepiece of the film – aren’t entirely successful, and instead of being profound, they feel shoehorned into the film. Swinging Safari loses the charm it has at the beginning through the sheer inability for it to care enough about its characters to be compelling in any logical way, and it just comes across as sluggish, confusing and quite frankly, lazy. For a film about growth and maturity, Swinging Safari is just as immature as its character, and unlike them, it doesn’t grow up.

I did want to enjoy Swinging Safari – it seemed to me to have the potential to be one of the great underseen gems of the year (like many Australian films that often fail to be recognized by a wider audience), and considering it was directed by someone who made one of the country’s best comedies, one couldn’t be blamed for having high hopes for this film, especially when looking at a concept that many people can relate to in some way. The concept was certainly very good, and it could’ve been so much more successful had it opted for a more darkly comedic tone (the original title was Flammable Children, which was certainly a much better title, especially if it had chosen to retain its ludicrously dark underlying theme of immaturity and juvenile mischief). Yet, it chose to smudge its promise with an insincere attempt to be profound and moving, with the final result being the direct opposite. Swinging Safari is a film that is far better in concept and premise than it was in execution, and while it does have its charms, with some genuinely funny moments, these are otherwise outliers in a relatively dull and listless film that has an almost sinister disregard for its characters and how the story shows them progressing. This is a film that could’ve been heartwarming, funny and meaningful, but it ends up being tonally unstable, narratively incoherent and unfortunately, undeniably forgettable. I’m sure this film will resonate for some people, but as a whole, it just doesn’t work, which is a shame, because this film could’ve been something really special.