THE NAKED WANDERER
Australia, 2019, 101 minutes, Colour.
Angus McLaren, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, John Cleese, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Callan Durlik, Meagan Smart, Alan Little, Jamie Timony.
Directed by Alan Lindsay.
Very much an demanding Australian romantic comedy, broadly popular entertainment (and looked down on by many Western Australian bloggers who felt this was beneath them). And, for overseas distribution the alternate title was Crazy for Love.
The setting is Western Australia and, in fact, the central character’s walking from Albany 2000 km up the coast, plenty of scenery and different locations along the way.
And the plot! Our hero, Jake (Angus McLaren) is infatuated with the daughter of his boss on a building site. She breaks off, thinking that he is boring. He wants to do something to win her back – and his best friend (played by the writer of the screenplay, Callan Durlik, who proves to be a fickle friend) who has television connections, especially with millionaire tycoon, King, played at his most rambunctious and angry-eruptive by John Cleese. The millionaire wants promotion, linked with charity donations, and puts up $200,000 for our hero to do the walk. But, there is one prescription, that he walk naked (except that there is a front and back kind of loincloth).
Nothing particularly startling, the scenery, Jack getting into stride with the walk, a range of odd characters that he meets, especially an aboriginal, Eli (Alan Little in his only screen role), the joke that when the thought is that Eli is quoting aboriginal law, he is offering a quote from Fight Club! There is a masseur along the way, our hero starving with his friend not bringing food, a carload of tourists and, the move into romantic comedy, his infatuation with Valerie (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), getting in and out of contact with the publicity-seeking King, a visit from King’s assistant who is in love with him, his former girlfriend trying to make up because of his celebrity…
And, at a final TV show, King is rather fobbed off and Valerie, who has misinterpreted an encounter with the former girlfriend, is reconciled to a happy ending.