Good for Nothing (Mike Wallis, 2011): New Zealand

Reviewed by Jim Burns. Viewed at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Good for Nothing director Mike Wallis started as a production assistant on Lord of the Rings in 2001 and had worked his way up the ranks of film making to animation coordinator on Avatar in 2009. Good for Nothing is his directorial debut, shot in New Zealand but portraying the American western frontier, a throwback to the spaghetti- westerns of the 1960’s.

Good for Nothing features an abundance of beautiful cinematography of the mountainous regions of New Zealand and is aesthetically very impressive. The two leading actors in this film were Cohen Holloway and Inge Rademeyer. Miss Rademeyer, who is engaged to the director Mike Wallis, gave a very good performance throughout the film. Mr. Holloway, on the other hand, gave a much less inspiring performance. His character was given a very minimal amount of lines and might have been set up for failure through the writing of his character.  This film was extremely slow moving, filled with uneventful moments of bad acting.

Unfortunately, the lack of dialogue and missing story line made this film a big disappointment for me. As a lover of the western genre, I understand the predictability that sometimes comes with these films.  While Good for Nothing captures many of the subtleties of this genre, its complete lack of interest in telling any kind of interesting story made me question why this movie was ever made. While I did not enjoy viewing this film, there was a definite potential shown by the director Mike Wallis and his fiancée actress Inge Rademeyer as filmmakers and producers.

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Good for Nothing (Mike Wallis, 2011): New Zealand,” an entry on Student Film Reviews

Published:
02.04.11 / 10pm
Category:
Films, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2011