Felafel has been a long time coming to the big screen. Five years of begging for money, writing umpteen screenplays and casting issues have delayed this adaptation of John Birmingham's cult classic novel.
And now that we finally have it here to see it can be described as a big disappointment.
First off let me say that if there are any fans of the book out there (and the amount of dog eared copies of Felafel I have seen seem to indicate there is), you will not like the movie. Its as simple as that.
Lowenstein has taken Birmingham's book, picked out a few choice moments from it, and just made up the rest to suit himself. It is no wonder that Bimingham wanted his name removed from the credits.
As a movie totally divorced from the book it just may stand up on its own - but its lack of drama and its reliance on heavy handed character musings will work against it.
The book is a series of recollections by the author of his share house experiences. Now I understand that adapting the novel for the screen would have been a difficult task; when I first heard Lowenstein was undertaking it I said to my friends "that will be a difficult task" - but the screenplay is so removed from the book as to make any comparisons useless, other than to comment that the two are entirely unalike.
But Lowenstein's solution - to make up a ficticious central character and artificially create a love triangle with his fellow house mates - is a bizarre and severly misguided one. Instead of 90 minutes of rollicking fun and mayhem, we are treated to a film that tries to solve 'Life, the Universe and Everything', occasionally throwing in a watered down or totally made up exploit of share house living.
There are many stories in it that would be great on the big screen - the exploits with the fish fingers, milk crates and their uses, the radio program and the raid, not to mention the furniture smashing sex session. Whether or not it would have made the film a bit too undergraduate is open to debate; but I feel it would have improved it vastly. That the film employs the use of several upbeat songs to make the fact they are trying to liven things up to cover deathly boring script.
The central character played by Noah Taylor is the emotional anchor for the film, and in that respect he does it well. We follow through three of the 'hundreds' of share houses he has occupied, meeting along the way various strange characters, as well as being reunited with former buddies. At one point he berates a recently 'outed' flatmate by running through the catalogue of woes that has beset him in his great accommodation journey, and you can't help but cry out "why aren't they in the bloody film!!!??".
As I said before, as a fan of the book I was very, very disappointed by this limp adaptation. If they had the guts to admit it wasn't really an adaptation and put a different title on it then it might have made a better impression. But as it stands "He Died with a Felafel in his Hand" is a poor bedfellow to the novel, and that is a crying shame. 3 out of 10.
And now that we finally have it here to see it can be described as a big disappointment.
First off let me say that if there are any fans of the book out there (and the amount of dog eared copies of Felafel I have seen seem to indicate there is), you will not like the movie. Its as simple as that.
Lowenstein has taken Birmingham's book, picked out a few choice moments from it, and just made up the rest to suit himself. It is no wonder that Bimingham wanted his name removed from the credits.
As a movie totally divorced from the book it just may stand up on its own - but its lack of drama and its reliance on heavy handed character musings will work against it.
The book is a series of recollections by the author of his share house experiences. Now I understand that adapting the novel for the screen would have been a difficult task; when I first heard Lowenstein was undertaking it I said to my friends "that will be a difficult task" - but the screenplay is so removed from the book as to make any comparisons useless, other than to comment that the two are entirely unalike.
But Lowenstein's solution - to make up a ficticious central character and artificially create a love triangle with his fellow house mates - is a bizarre and severly misguided one. Instead of 90 minutes of rollicking fun and mayhem, we are treated to a film that tries to solve 'Life, the Universe and Everything', occasionally throwing in a watered down or totally made up exploit of share house living.
There are many stories in it that would be great on the big screen - the exploits with the fish fingers, milk crates and their uses, the radio program and the raid, not to mention the furniture smashing sex session. Whether or not it would have made the film a bit too undergraduate is open to debate; but I feel it would have improved it vastly. That the film employs the use of several upbeat songs to make the fact they are trying to liven things up to cover deathly boring script.
The central character played by Noah Taylor is the emotional anchor for the film, and in that respect he does it well. We follow through three of the 'hundreds' of share houses he has occupied, meeting along the way various strange characters, as well as being reunited with former buddies. At one point he berates a recently 'outed' flatmate by running through the catalogue of woes that has beset him in his great accommodation journey, and you can't help but cry out "why aren't they in the bloody film!!!??".
As I said before, as a fan of the book I was very, very disappointed by this limp adaptation. If they had the guts to admit it wasn't really an adaptation and put a different title on it then it might have made a better impression. But as it stands "He Died with a Felafel in his Hand" is a poor bedfellow to the novel, and that is a crying shame. 3 out of 10.