Directed by Mark Grentell
Starring Damian Callinan, Kate Mulvaney, John Howard, Josh McConville, Stephen Hunter, Fayssal Bazzi, Harry Seng, Angus McLaren

With their local AFL club, The Roosters, facing financial ruin, the hopes of the the tiny country town of Bodgy Creek rest on the slumped shoulders of former football hero Troy Carrington (Damian Callinan, amiable and self-deprecating), who hits upon the idea of inducting locally settled refugees to bolster the clubs ranks.

The notion is controversial, to say the least, and Carrington faces stiff opposition from some quarters, embodied by blustering old bloke Bull Barlow (John Howard in fine form) and arrogant star player and garden variety asshole Carpet Burn (Angus McLaren). It doesn't help that Carrington is something of a pariah: his footy career curtailed by a shattered leg, he returned to his environmentalist roots and managed to get the local timber mill shuttered, much to the consternation of the townsfolk. Combine that with the kind of hidebound anti-immigrant prejudice found in comments threads across the land, and our man is in for an uphill battle.

Lucky for him, then, that The Merger is a big-hearted, inclusive affair in which such battles must, of course, be won - and there's nothing wrong with that. Directed by Backyard Ashes honcho Mark Grentell and adapted from Callinan's own one man stage show, this is a warm and rousing dramedy about a community overcoming their own prejudices, bringing in new blood, and becoming all the stronger for it.

Indeed, Bodgy Creek comes across as a kind of cultural melting pot, with a more in common with Northern Exposure's Cicely, Alaska* than its actual real world analogue and filming location, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. In his efforts to meld his newly diversified squad into something that can win the odd game, Carrington gets everyone to let their freak flag fly, so we get to see the team indulge in a bit of Shakespeare here, a bit of interpretive dance there, a spot of backyard chemistry, and so on. Indeed, the population of the town is such a collection of misfits that at times you wonder why the addition of Syrian Sayyid (Fayssal Bazzi), Thai Tou Pou (Harry Tseng), Sri Lankan Suresh (Sahil Saluja) and their fellow immigrants is such a sticking point?

Well, because it's not about race so much as it's about change, and how frightening the prospect can be. As played by Howard, Bull isn't a racist so much as a man fearful that the world is filling up with things he doesn't recognise, and discarding people he cares about - like his football player son, dead in a car accident a year before the film opens. His widowed daughter-in-law, Angie (Kate Mulvany), provides a love interest for Carrington - another reason for Bull to dig in his heels in the face of the soft-spoken greenie's revisionist footy agenda.

But Bull isn't a villain - he's a guy failing to deal with his own wounds, and The Merger's principal charm is that it refuses to vilify. Its satirical, but never savage - it's mantra of acceptance extends to all. It's not afraid to go for the heart strings when it feels justified, though - a tearful monologue from Sayyid is an absolute show-stopper, and the nascent relationship between Carrington and Kate feels both natural and earned.

The Merger's flaws are common to most Aussie big screen comedies - a tendency to write the jokes in bold print, a certain wooliness in the plotting, and the suspicion that, from the perspective of a 2018 audience, the film is describing an Australia which almost no longer exists in terms of its cultural window dressing, attitudes, and assumptions. The film never quite overcomes the first two, but it tackles the last by presenting a forward-thinking vision of Australia as it so easily could be, if only we were as big-hearted as the people of Bodgy Creek prove to be. It's not quite the calibre of The Castle - what is? - but it's definitely pool room-worthy.

TRAVIS JOHNSON










*Yeah, that's a pretty deep cut, I guess. Go watch that show.