Kangaroo Island film review: when all roads hop to home

Do you know which film I was reminded of when watching Kangaroo Island, a new Australian dramedy written by Canadian actor turned writer Sally Gifford and directed by her husband Timothy David?

Muriel’s Wedding. No, wait, hear me out. It’s nothing to do with the fact it’s an Australian filmmaker directing his first major film or that said film revolves around a young woman who is putting far too much emphasis on surface things like fairy tale weddings or, in this case, Hollywood fame, before life comes along to slap her in the face and teach her to care more about the really important things in life – family, friendship and being true to oneself – rather than such shallow societal signifiers.

Although both of those things are true.

But no, actually the hark back to Muriel has much more to do with its sensibility, which is oh-so uniquely Australian in tone. On a first watch of Muriel’s Wedding, not long after arriving in the country, the humour seemed, if not impenetrable, then certainly offputting. Decades later, it all made sense. It’s bold, pretty darn dark and decidedly, almost defiantly, Australian.

Watch the Kangaroo Island trailer.

Kangaroo Island has a lot going on in the drama stakes (perhaps a little too much, but we’ll get to that in a bit), but when it comes to the absolute gut punch – the deepest and most emotionally affecting moment of all – the film has the audacity to undercut it with an inspired pay-off to a running gag that has been threaded throughout the entire film.

Just when the audience may have been expecting to extract their hankies, they instead are offered the opportunity to release any tension with a great big guffaw. How PJ Hogan is that?

Prior to this, however, Kangaroo Island packs plenty of plot into its 113 minutes, with love triangles, terminal illness, family feuds, infidelity, tragic deaths, Christian land grabs and duplicity abounding. There’s even a quick car crash thrown in for good measure.

Kangaroo Island: soap on a rope

You could easily accuse the film of having enough twists and turns for a three-episode arc of a soap opera, but Gifford fortunately redeems herself thanks to a welcome level of self-awareness. One of the characters even references Home and Away at one point – a joke given extra snark due to the fact that lead actor Rebecca Breeds appeared in 389 episodes of that self same series.

That was well over a decade ago, however, and she’s since augmented her CV with roles in shows like The Code, Pretty Little Liars and, perhaps most notably, Clarice – a TV follow-up series to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), in which she took over the role created by Jodie Foster and also played by Julianne Moore in Hannibal (2001).

Kangaroo Island: real-life trajectory

In Kangaroo Island her character follows her own real life trajectory – to a point. She plays Lou, a successful actor living in Hollywood, but in the film she’s one that has fallen into the ‘hot mess’ category of late, lacking the trifecta – a job, a boyfriend and a place to live. These latter two issues combine for an excellent early sly gag, nicely set up and delivered by Gifford and David, and giving us a neat taste of the way the story will be framed.

We’ve all seen a thousand films that begin with someone being sent a ticket or asked to go somewhere (usually home) and being so stridently adamant that this will never, ever happen. It’s then just up to the film of course to find a way to make that happen.

And Kangaroo Island gets points for positing one of the most convoluted routes imaginable – featuring a typically unhelpful acting agent, a surprisingly helpful policewoman, and a couple of airport enablers intent on doing as many shots as they can get down them before boarding is called.

Kangaroo Island: there’s no place like home

Once Lou is back on home turf – a stunning property on the island of the title – the film launches head first into unravelling the multiple strands of her strained relationship with her sister Freya (Adelaide Clemens) and brother-in-law Ben (Joel Jackson), her father Rory (Erik Thomson) and a couple of other interested parties, particularly old friend Todd (Louis Henbest).

If the results are a touch overwritten, it’s certainly better than the opposite. Indeed, the aforementioned running gag with the bold pay-off is so astutely laced throughout the film, it’s a sign that this is a screenplay that has been polished and checked, and then polished again.

The characters all feel real and lived in, and when a current film makes the space to encompass the perspective of a deeply religious character, you know it’s coming from a writer who isn’t going for the easy target. And all of the cast do justice to Gifford’s screenplay. Even Henbest, whose character initially appears to be little more than set dressing, has a standout confession scene that he handles really beautifully.

And in another droll cameo, Gifford herself plays Lou’s smarmy and two-faced agent Danielle. For this experienced actor and TV presenter, who must surely have faced her fair share of unreliable representation at some point in her career, it’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t at least a skerrick of thinly veiled revenge in this portrayal… 

Ian McCarroll’s cinematography is an absolute highlight, but with scenery as stunning as this – the colour of that ocean! – that’s almost a given. Perhaps there could have been a little less reliance on handheld work at times, but that’s a minor criticism.

Finally, look out for the credits and particularly one for the local general store that appears in the film – it’s clearly a contractual arrangement but a funny one at that.

Kangaroo Island is released in Australian cinemas on 21 August 2025.

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