Tomorrow, When the War Began | Review

Screenwriter Stuart Beattie (who you can blame for collecting paychecks for penning dismal fare like G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, 2009, as well as Baz Luhrman’s 2008 misfire Australia) has been giving the opportunity to direct John Marsden’s young adult book series, Tomorrow, When the War Began for his debut. Certainly better written than recent adapted young adult fiction like the cinematic cancer known as Twilight, your appreciation for such banal histrionics featuring a group of boring, poorly fleshed out Australian teens combating the military forces that have taken over their country will depend on how young adult you like your fiction. There’s certainly a market for teenage heroes, but Beattie’s flaccid adaptation feels like a bloated exercise in time wasting (but, rest assured, TWTWB 2 and 3 are already in the works). It’s only too bad that Britney’s “Dance Until The World Ends” couldn’t have accompanied the credits.

Framed with video diary footage from one of the protagonists, an almost teary eyed girl tells us about a story that needs to be told, of “when everything changed.” Flashback to the best and brightest of times when two girlfriends concoct a plan to go camping in the Outback, but the father of the girl that owns the camper (she has a name, but they’re all so poorly developed the teenagers that they can only be remembered by their broad stroke stereotyping) insists they collect a group of eight before they can go. So, an inordinate amount of screen time is taken to show us the selection process.

The girls amass a group that includes the dumb blonde, the beefy rebel (he’s half Greek), the Asian guy from the Chinese restaurant (everyone thinks he’s weird, we’re told), the buttoned up Christian girl, a bland boyfriend, and the dog. Montage of some camping things, and then, the teens come back to town to discover that all their families have been taken hostage by inhabitants of the poverty stricken neighboring islands, insisting Australia must shares its riches with their neighbors. The teens decide that they must fight back, and save their parents and country.

Beyond the obvious lack of vivaciousness on display from the young cast, Tomorrow, When the War Began suffers from some painfully slow pacing and clichéd writing. In the midst of hiding from captors that have seized the entire content of Australia, two teen females discuss Miles Franklin’s classic, My Brilliant Career, which, of course, was famously made into a film starring Sam Neill and Judy Davis. One of them has decided that now seems to be the best time to hunker down and enjoy it, prompting a conversation that ends with, “Yeah, it’s better than the movie. Yeah, the books are always better.” Yeah. Well, at least we’re all on the same page there.

While Beattie almost manages to make his film feel like one of those live action films that Disney used to make, featuring violence paired with dark, strange themes (Watcher In The Woods anyone?) he only manages to succeed in proving that the budget was funneled into making the action sequences look nifty and not much else. Lacking a sense of adventure, dread, or danger, plus forgettable characters, and a vague homeland invasion theme (surely, if the invaders neglected to capture a group of teens, some other, more interesting character must also have eluded them) Beattie’s debut is only one more mediocre example of how not to tell a story.

Rating 1 stars