One More Shot review: a crowd-pleasing boozy time-travel film

You know the worm that floats about in the bottom of certain bottles of tequila? Well, I recently learned from Aussie film One More Shot that if that worm is there, then you’re drinking mezcal, not tequila.

It turns out that mezcal worms – like the one present in Minnie’s magical bottle of time-travelling ‘tequila’ – are technically moth larva (gusano de maguey if you want to get real technical). That’s right: booze makers in Mexico decided to capture and drown these poor little guys before they even had a chance to turn into beautiful Mariposas.

In a way, it’s the perfect metaphor for Emily Browning’s party-girl-turned-anaesthetist Minnie. After firmly deciding on New Years Eve 1999 that her life is going nowhere, she is all too easily tempted by her intoxicating, temporal-shifting McGuffin – and wouldn’t we all be, if a bottle’s worth of shots promised us a chance to do it all again?

What’s One More Shot about?

So, after arriving at a decidedly dull NYE party at her friend’s mansion and having an awful time, she becomes willingly trapped in a timey-wimey loop-de-loop, redoing the crossing of the millennium again and again until she’s satisfied she’s got things right.

If only winning back her old flame, repairing her friends’ marriage, and avoiding a creepy coke-snorting guy were that easy!

Watch the trailer for One More Shot:

Fuelled by booze and bad decisions, Browning’s Minnie is relatable and fun to watch, a true Melbourne suburbs gal whose determination to fix her life in all the wrong ways could rival Crazy Ex Girlfriend. Her character arc, as well as the arcs of her former-lover Joe, friend and former classmate Rodney, and even the snivelling chauvinistic crack guy (who is only known, fittingly, as C-Word) surprises in how deep it can go.

As an Australian answer to Groundhog Day (Wombat Day?), One More Shot works about as much as you’d expect it to. Time-loop narratives, in other words, aren’t new fodder, but rather an ol’ reliable conceit that you can paste other bits onto, give it a bit of a polish and voila, you’ve got a Stan Original film.

Lucky, then, that rather than being dragged into groan-worthy predictability, the film is elevated by a really strong cast (Browning, Sean Keenan, Ashley Zukerman, Aisha Dee) and some fun nostalgic elements.

We are firmly in the era of Y2K rose-coloured hindsight, and writers Alice Foulcher and Gregory Erdstein know it. I only wish the film had explored this theme more instead of just using it as a framing device. Having the fear of societal collapse upon transitioning out of the 90s somehow become justified would have been far more interesting.

Does One More Shot deserve one more watch?

The 88 minute-long film finally lost me when it got too carried away with flights of fancy, instead of staying grounded in the established reality. Time-travelling tequila I can handle, but breaking the otherwise firm laws of physics is too much!

While not being as memorable as it hopes, the Nicholas Clifford directed One More Shot is certainly a perfect palate cleanser for after the more serious and sober MIFF picks. And judging by the reaction in the screening I attended, it’s a bonafide crowd-pleaser.

One More Shot had its Australian premiere at MIFF, and will soon head to cinemas and then stream on demand exclusively with Stan.

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