Any Questions For Ben?

(2012)

How about a new Australian film? Any Questions For Ben? is a Melbourne based comedy.

Ben (Josh Lawson) is in marketing and is well on the way in his life. He is restless, regularly changing jobs, apartments and girlfriends and when he is invited back to his high school to talk about his achievements to the current class, he feels at the top of his game. At the engagement, he meets an old friend Alex (Rachael Taylor), who works for the UN in the Middle East and when she speaks, she is adored by all. But, when Ben talks about marketing, he gets crickets (and so he should, fuck marketing...). Ben begins to believe that his life is meaningless and that he has become aimless. Throughout the next twelve months or so, we follow Ben with his friends as he tries to figure out what it all means and tries to get into a relationship with Alex, who pops in and out of his life throughout that time.

I remember this film copped a bit of the pasting from the critics when released at the cinemas, mainly because it wasn't like the filmmaker's all-time Australian classic, The Castle, a no budget charmer that is impossible to hate or their next film, The Dish. Any Questions For Ben? isn't that film (and nor should it be), it's a slick Hollywood-like comedy that still has plenty of laughs and likeable performance. No, it's not perfect, but hey it's better than most attempts at comedy made recently in Australia and deserves far more respect than it is getting. And who cares what the critics think, I enjoyed it.

And when I saw this film in the cinema (I was the only one in that cinema mind you, although the film didn't do that bad at the box office here, just nowhere near The Castle or The Dish), I nearly fell out my seat when in the last 20 minutes of the film, completely out of the blue, Rachael Taylor showed her breasts in a brief sex scene. That was completely unexpected...

Rachael Taylor film clips (collages below)

Liliya May film clips (collages below)