Dallas Doll (1994) Online

urgh! 3 things a movie needs: a good script, a good plot and good casting. i watched this movie expecting it to be hilariously terrible and was unfortunately disappointed when it was just plain terrible. I lost the will to live halfway through. The only thing which stopped me from stabbing my eyes out with a fork was Rose Byrne (who was the reason for me watching it in the first place). She did a good job as Rastus and her appearance hasn't changed much since she was 13. it was a fantastic first effort in a movie. the dog was also very good. both did a great job with such awful material. Sandra Bernhard i think was the biggest mistake of the movie. she was completely miscast, and i don't think she ever quite got the character.

I give the movie 2 out of 10 - and thats only because of Rose.

Solid acting from the studly Blundell elevates this confused feature from turkey to flawed classic. During the steamy love scene, who wouldn't like to swap places with the lucky, lucky Bernhard (or to be one of those weird voyeuristic ravens at the very minimum)? Aussie high-jinks at its most quirky and incomprehensible - what a rush! I'm just glad I came along for the ride.

The film wouldn't be worth comment if it weren't for the utterly gorgeous, heart-melting Jake Blundell. Move over Sandra B!

But Jake Blundell is not just eye-candy for the ladies! He has this magnetism, a studied intensity that carried the film, which is quite frankly a little lacking in plot. Future film stardom must be assured for this talented young buck.

I saw Dallas Doll many years ago at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian film festival. It was the Closing Night film. DGA1 (the theater) was packed and the audience absolutely ate this film up. It was a laugh-fest. It's such a crazy, wild, fun ride and so very Australian in its comedic sensibilities. Like all films, one can find things to criticize - this is far from a perfect film. But, personally, Dallas Doll has such a crazy spirit I was able to forgive it's blemishes. One of the things I enjoyed about the film is the writer-director's romanticism of Texas and Texans. It's a hoot to see a non-native's take on Texas. So pick apart this film if you must but I think it is absolutely worth watching!

Sandra Bernhard comes to Australia to play golf and seduces an entire family: son, father, mother. There are some UFOs around, the dog tries to commit suicide and the birds are strangely curious about human sexuality. Jake Blundell discovers that sexy Sandy is kind of manipulative and has not the best intentions and saves the day.

A strange film indeed, but lovable from the first to the last minute. Sandra (who hated this film and had it banned from the US) gives her best movie performance since "The King of Comedy" and is (although not pretty) drop dead sexy here - it's beyond belief actually! And Jake Blundell is equally desirable. A pity he hasn't done anything great since.

If you can get a copy of "Dallas Doll", you won't regret watching it. The strip mini-golf game with Doris Day's "Move Over Darling" is simply hilarious!

I don't understand the reviewers who said "The film wouldn't be worth comment", "confused ... turkey (apart from one actor's performance)", "just plain terrible". For me the praise for the actors in the brother & sister roles is about the reviewers' obsessions rather than the movie. There's no confusion in the story, which is also quite eventful (if bizarre, and with a real dark twist, at the end); it's quite funny once you stop caring too much about the corruption first of a family and then of a whole town by a newcomer.

For me, Sandra Bernhard was at first a little bit too far from drop-dead gorgeous to be the obvious casting in the title role, but then I decided this was deliberate because it was her character's sheer brass neck and outrageous behaviour that won over all those small town Australians, not physiognomic perfection.

I reckon Ann Turner's story and the way she tells it are, overall, just right. It feels a little slow to start with but if you pay attention what is happening is quite quick: Dallas takes over a family and their home, persuades them to sell up and move to a farm, then takes over the town. From an outsider who arrives out of the blue on a plane from America, one by one she gets the family, then the townspeople to depend on her, dote on everything she says, and do whatever she decides she'd like them to. At one moment she remarks to someone that the town mayor, who has held the office for years and is likely to go on a lot longer, is an obstacle to her. The next thing we see is that she's putting him in a position where he doesn't want to be mayor any more and promptly resigns; the clever -- and entertaining -- part is how she does this, and the fact that he feels she has done him an enormous favour getting rid of him, rather than the reverse. Not only that, but she ends up as the most powerful person in the town herself. That episode takes a few minutes. The story is full of quirky little sub-plots, well observed in their execution.

This story is part sex farce, part morality tale, part comedy fantasy -- and part black comedy, in a way. There are some slow bits, and some of those interludes without dialogue where the action soundtrack is replaced by what is presumably one of the director's favourite popular music soundtracks. Despite these it's an entertaining story well worth viewing, certainly more so than a lot of the rubbish that fills TV schedules these days.