The Castle

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Living adjacent to an international airport in a ramshackle home crammed with tawdry trinkets, three washed-up sons, a housewife who can't cook to save her life, and a dead-end job isn't that bad, right? Hardly. It's the comedic basis for The Castle, the latest piece of white-trash humor from Down Under. The one and only trick of this pony is that Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton) believes himself to be leading a blessed existence in an Edenic locale. Thus, when officials offer him vast sums of money so the airport can expand, Darryl steadfastly refuses, going so far as to hire a barely competent lawyer to take his battle to the high courts.

The competent actors play their lower-class cards with cheerily straight faces. While the resultant gags suggest that subsistence is more than enough for the underprivileged, the movie will reward those who can send their disbelief rocketing among the jumbo jets that roar over the Kerrigan's home. Ignorance may be bliss, but it wears thin over the course of an hour and a half.