Rachel Ward is a good actress, and she seems like a nice woman. And this movie includes some deservedly famous actors like Sam Neill, Brian Brown and Greta Scacchi, even the luminous Nell Cambell in a small role. So it is with considerable regret I have to rate this one of the worst movies i've ever seen. Yep, literally. It's pretty much "The Big Chill" relocated to Palm Beach in Sydney; but with more money, glamour, and less profundity. The setting is so ludicrously opulent, it makes it hard to identify with the actors at all. The entire plot is immediately obvious, a recurring cliche: put a bunch of old friends and relatives together in a house for a few days, some old tensions flare up, angry friends decamp to opposite ends of the house, then some crisis brings everything to a head, everyone is reconciled, then they all sit around basking in friendship without the simmering tensions of before. The soundtrack is the greatest hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s, loud and intrusive, telling exactly how we are supposed to feel at every point. There might be a handful of people in Australia who really do live like this, but they are so remote it's hard to have much common feeling with them; why should we sympathise with people who have so much seemingly barely-deserved wealth. In fairness, my wife thought it was a light-hearted, escapist romp. For me, it was 100 minutes of execrable tedium.
Review of Palm Beach
