Beware the return of Wog Boy

By Glen Humphries
Updated November 6 2012 - 12:20am, first published May 24 2010 - 1:56am
Beware the return of Wog Boy
Beware the return of Wog Boy

It's surprising it took 10 years to make a sequel to The Wog Boy.That's not because The Wog Boy was a fantastic film (admittedly I never saw it - I'd had a gutful of Nick Giannopoulos' endless stream of wog-themed productions).What it was, however, was one of the biggest grossing Australian films of the past decade. It also ranks third - behind The Dish and Happy Feet - on the list of money-making Aussie comedies.Now, in Hollywood an immediate sequel would be a no-brainer.But here, well, perhaps this sort of stuff is not what the Australian film industry wants to associate themselves with. You know what I mean - films that someone might actually want to see.That 10-year gap hasn't done the sequel any favours. The humour feels like it's still stuck in the late 1990s. (Really, does anyone even use the word "wog" anymore?)For me, watching Kings of Mykonos gave me the feeling I get switching on the new series of Hey, Hey It's Saturday. It might have been funny once but now it's just extremely dated and a little cringeworthy.Still, the sequel may have worked if it allowed for the passage of time. There might have been some comic potential in having mates Frank and Steve (Vince Colosimo and Giannopoulos) still thinking they were cool while everyone else saw them as past-it losers.Instead, these 40-somethings are still super cool and able to attract much younger and hotter ladies. The storyline that features Steve woo the gorgeous Zoe (Zeta Makrypoulia) is farcical.Then there's the absolutely ludicrous scene where the mates push a bunch of hip young things off the dance floor to perform a lame routine better suited to 1985. Instead of being laughed at - as would happen in reality - the hip young things really get into the granddads' dance moves.The film is 101 minutes but feels much, much longer.There is a plot. Steve inherits a Mykonos beach from some uncle he never knew, so he goes over there and discovers the evil Mihali (Alex Dimitriades) wants to get his hands on the inheritance.There's a number of subplots involving German archaeologists, rare goats and a car rally - all of which are pointless and should have been cut at the script-editing stage.While the film really fails as a comedy it does work as a tourism promotion for Mykonos - the place looks beautiful.No doubt some of the people who went to see Wog Boy will check out this sequel. What remains to be seen is if enough of them will go to create similar box office takings. I doubt it.

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