Friday, July 13, 2007

"Introducing the Dwights" features a feisty and often entertaining Brenda Blethyn as an aspiring stand-up comedian. But her efforts are overshadowed by an Australian movie that borrows shamelessly from overfamiliar conceits.

Essentially the movie revisits two tropes: the story of the working-class dreamer -- as shown in 1983's "Flashdance" and 1997's "The Full Monty" -- for whom the performing arts becomes a way out of financial doldrums and toward their dreams; and the older-woman comedies of recent years, such as "Calendar Girls" and "Saving Grace," in which the characters do something outrageous (pose nude for a calendar, grow marijuana, etc.) to make ends meet.

In "Dwights," Blethyn plays the salty-tongued, mile-a-minute Jean, a canteen cook who's desperate to make it as a comic. But while she schemes and dreams about the big time, she keeps tight emotional control over her two sons, 20-year-old Tim (Khan Chittenden) and his mentally retarded teenage brother, Mark (Richard Wilson). When Tim falls in love with Jill (Emma Booth), an independent woman who wants her own corner of his soul, a major conflict brews and boils over. Of course, this conflict occurs just as Jean's career seems ready to take off.

Unfortunately, "Dwights" (its original Australian title is "Clubland") is amusing only for its performances, including those of Chittenden and Wilson. The cast cannot hide the movie's derivative shortcomings, which only remind us that we've seen better and funnier elsewhere.

-- Desson Thomson

Introducing the Dwights R, 120 minutes Contains sexual scenes, nudity and profanity. At Landmark's E Street Cinema and Landmark's Bethesda Row.