Review: Fun You Can Have Dying

GRAEME TUCKETT

BEAUTY AND INSIGHT: Roxane Mesquida and Matt Whelan in Kiwi film The Most Fun You Can Have Dying.

REVIEW: Michael is young, handsome, charismatic, and popular. Apart from his choice to live in Hamilton, be obnoxiously self-destructive, and unfaithful to his girlfriend whenever he has the chance, there's a lot to like about the guy.

And then, Michael is diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer.

The only possible treatment is still in the experimental stages, and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, some of Michael's family aren't short of a crust, and the money is raised.

Michael, faced with the possibility of continuing to live in Hamilton, or gapping it with cash to die alone in Europe, understandably makes a run for it.

And so begins a peculiar, and eventually likeable wee movie.

The Most Fun You Can Have Dying follows Michael to Hong Kong, where he gets a tattoo and new passport, and then on to London, where he promptly gets beaten up for hitting on the wrong girl, and comes to on the footpath to meet exactly the right one.

The film is a road trip, of sorts, a fantasy of youth and waste, and at times a thoughtful and quite incisive existential sketch of what it's like to hate yourself, when everyone around you thinks you're actually just fine.

After a shaky start, The Most Fun settles into a very watchable groove.

Matt Whelan is an undeniably talented and attractive leading man, Roxane Mesquida a perfect foil, and Kirstin Marcon directs with some moments of real beauty and insight.

I liked The Most Fun a lot. Go and have a look.

The Most Fun You Can Have Dying (94 min) (R16)

Directed by Kirstin Marcon

Starring Matt Whelan, Roxane Mesquida

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