Victoria Haralabidou and Loren Taylor in The Moon is Upside Down (2023)

All clips and remarks from Johnny Moronic

Johnny’s comments:

The Moon is Upside Down is an absurdist comedy that tells three different stories of women having to deal with events in their lives. Natalia (Victoria Haralabidou) arrives in New Zealand to marry Sean (Jermaine Clement) who has promised her a cafeteria that she can run but things don’t go well from the start. Sean’s sister Hilary (Robyn Malcolm) instantly hates her and the cafeteria is not ready and isn’t to her liking plus there’s no real spark between Natalia and Sean. Briar (Loren Taylor also writer/director) has started a relationship over webcam with old friend Tim (Robbie Magasiva) who used to go out with her sister. Tim then decides he wants to see Briar in person and they decide to go on a romantic weekend together but it goes wrong quickly and worse when they hit a bird with their car. Finally, Faith’s (Elizabeth Hawthorne) husband has recently died and she is left to deal with business interests including an apartment complex where she discovers the dead body of one of the tenants. She has to deal with the ashes of the dead tenant and finds her attempts to get rid of them thwarted. OK comedy that has it’s moments but the movie veers into misanthropy and lingers there for a while. There are genuinely funny moments and an occasional moving moment mostly revolving around Natalia who’s by far the most interesting of characters in the movie. Neither Briar or Faith have much of interest in their tales and the connections between the stories are fairly tenuous. The male characters are pretty pathetic and don’t really add much to the movie.

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