[by
Paul Byrnes, Sydney Morning Herald]
Toxic invaders return with double the warts and all
CANE TOADS: THE CONQUEST (in 3D)
BUFO MARINUS is back – not that it ever left us, more’s the pity.
Australians may have driven over millions of them, whacked them with golf clubs, cricket bats and shovels, boiled them up and smoked them or even turned them into scrotum-like money pouches but we have made no dent in their numbers, nor halted their progress across northern Australia.
When Mark Lewis made Cane Toads: An Unnatural History in 1988, the toads were still largely confined to Queensland. Indeed, one of the film’s more amusing sides was the pride some Queenslanders felt about being the home of the cane toad.
Almost 24 years later, they are across the Northern Territory, through Darwin and as far as Kununurra, in northern Western Australia. They have been found as far south as Sydney. Their numbers are now estimated at more than 1.5 billion. That’s what happens when you introduce a species in which one female can lay up to 50,000 eggs twice a year.
The first film was a great hit. It was a clever piece of gonzo wildlife filmmaking, satirising the inherent conservatism of the nature documentary. Lewis did not deify the science. There were plenty of scientists and science facts but it was also a folk tale, looking at the connection between cane toads and humans. Who could forget that chubby, happy little girl fondling her pet cane toad, known as Dairy Queen? Monica Kraus became the iconic image of the first film, holding Dairy Queen up to the camera, singing lullabies to the enormous creature in German.
Now grown up, she remembers Dairy Queen as an amazing companion, a creature she loved dearly. When DQ died, her mother told her that her pet had gone to live in a happy toad fantasy land.
The film has quite a number of people who still seem to live in the same place. Kevin Ladynski built a Travelling Toad Show of tableaux with stuffed toads in costume. It includes a four-man tag-team wrestling match, a full-scale highway car smash with body parts, ambulances and cane toad policeman and an Aussie rules football game, featuring what looks like Richmond versus St Kilda. Ladynski invested everything he had in the show but Queens-landers did not flock to see it. His artistry, odd though it is, should be preserved in a museum.
The original film was as much about our species as theirs. The new film is even more so but not always to good comic effect. The cultural impact of cane toads in Australia is greater than it was 25 years ago, partly because of the original film. Lewis is older and craftier, having made many other films. The new film is a remarkable technical feat, said to be the first Australian 3D digital film. It looks spectacular and parts of it are hilarious.
Lewis always had a gift for gentle visual jokes, such as the shots in the original of cane toad eyes peering from slits in suitcases, during their long journey from Hawaii to Australia in 1935. He recreates a few of these gags and interviews some of the same people, saying the same things in the same places.
Lewis was one of the first people to recognise the comic potential of using wide-angle lenses for documentary interviews. These showed the person being interviewed in their own environment. The technique was inherently humorous but also dangerous. It could lead to filmmaking with a smirk. Lewis largely avoided that in the first film but not always in the second. There are a couple of sequences that leave a nasty taste. When he recreates the death of a man in a caravan park in Bowen, electrocuted by his own frog-sticking spear, the film becomes needlessly graphic, verging on cruel.
Cane Toads: The Conquest is also almost twice as long as the first film. It’s a completely new feature, apart from a few clips, and is an even greater indictment of our stupidity. It also has some inspired comic sequences, despite occasional lapses into overstatement.
The 3D images will probably bring a new generation to the story. Let’s hope someone watching will come up with a good idea for how to stop the toxic little buggers.
See the original story here; http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/toxic-invaders-return-with-double-the-warts-and-all-20110601-1fgl6.html