The Dish (dir. Rob Sitch, 2000) - EveryFilmIWatch Review

Describing The Dish as one of the greatest Australian films, whilst true, doesn’t do it the justice it deserves. It’s one of the most heart-warming comedies from any country at any time. The film tells a deeply Australian story about a small group of satellite dish operators in rural Australia who, during the moon landing of 1969, were tasked with broadcasting the images to the rest of the world.

The ‘dish’ itself sits in a sheep paddock in Parks, a small quintessentially Australian town. It gets as much use as a radio receiver as it does as a makeshift cricket pitch for the technicians that run it. They're not bad at their jobs or under qualified, in fact they prove themselves incredibly smart. They're also certainly not uninterested. But, unsurprisingly, the Australian maxim ‘She'll be right’ is not found in the official NASA handbook. Nor is blaming ‘the bloody pie warmer' for the back-up generator failing. This, along with several doses of bad luck, mean the Parks team struggle to keep the show on the road, all the while trying to handle a visit from the US ambassador and the watchful eye of a visiting NASA mechanic, played with unrelenting stiffness by Patrick Warburton.

The film’s brilliance hinges on its excellent comedic writing and the efforts of the cast, in particular a really touching performance by a fatherly Sam Neill as the recently widowed dish operator or ‘dishmaster' as the others refer to him. Beyond that, it does a spectacular job of evoking an era, with Parks and its misfit locals all buzzing with the excitement and joy at being a part of the ‘greatest achievement of mankind’. It’s a film that is uplifting in the way only an Australian film could be: mostly it’s just laughs the whole way through and suddenly you find yourself sitting alongside the characters in rapture at the achievement that they’re a part of, totally connected to their personalities and stories. A shining example of what Australian cinema is capable of when given the opportunity, resources and audience.

EveryFilmIWatch is multi-channel film review project run by Sebastian Cox, ScriptUp co-founder. Further reviews can be found on Instagram.