Rikky and Pete (1988)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Blistering performances.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Saw this long ago, and the movie has stuck with me, partly for it's feel, and partly for the crazy inventions that I wish I had thought of. Been looking for it for years, and can't find a copy anywhere. One thing about the crazy inventions- they all had to be made to work in the film. Pete makes a machine that folds newspapers into the shape of paper airplanes to chuck them at people's houses to make his paper route more efficient- the giant paper airplanes get flung from the machine itself and really fly. He gets himself run out of town for playing one revenge prank too many on the local constable, destroying the entire squad car fleet, because the constable, years before, accidentally ran down his mother in a crosswalk and crippled her. So he and his sister go on the run to the outback, and, helping her work as a geologist, he decides to make a mechanical horse so they can drill 6 holes into the rock at once instead of just one, and you can see him operating/riding the horse, and you can see they really had to figure out how to build one of these things to make it work. Overall, the whole movie reminded me of similar movies form Down Undah, like Red Dog, where the Aussie vibe really comes through.

After Malcolm, that did set the bar pretty high, we drop back a bit with a less successful Aussie comedy, that still manages to be bloody entertaining, where again we are reminded with familiarity to who penned this. This film's good but just not as good as Malcolm was. Sister (Landis) and brother (Kearney) team, take off to the outback, as little brother, you could say, has got himself into a bit of trouble with authorities. Pete is an immature, inventive, and causes a lot of unnecessary trouble, and has anger issues to. He makes obscene phone calls to authorities, causes chain cop car collisions, etc, with his smart arse stunts, as posing as fictional character Evil Donald. He has a newspaper business, he operates from his car, his delivery of them in the form of paper gliders has to be seen. He has trouble with his folks, where really sister, Rikki, a budding singer/guitarist, is the only one who really understands him, where this getaway, is like a last resort, one outburst I'll never forget has Rikki walking off in a huff, after spouting "F off Peter". They make new friends, in the outback, while also getting wealthy as doing a bit of prospecting. Trouble finally catches up with Pete in the form of city cop, (Bill Hunter) who really has it for him, and that's after Pete really makes an arse of himself one night in town, in some drunken and disorderly behavior, racking up quite a fine. His behavior tends to be worrying, where you really don't want to see anything happen to this problematic guy. I really liked Landis's character in this. She reminded a lot of my own sister's character, where Rikki, is a character I think is afraid, of falling in love, while Kearney is so so as Pete. There are a lot of entertaining moments in this film, though I found the movie a little dry or sagging, and as a runner up to Malcolm, you could of down far worse. For lovers of Malcolm, and others, a different and original comedy.

Tracing paper thin plot, WEAK conflict and so much forced quirkiness that it'll make your head ache! The characters are all unbelievable and SUPER cliché. And its about a brother and sister...there are many moments where there would be sexual tension and excitement in their conversations if they weren't brother and sister, even if they weren't love interests. But its a brother and sister...and they're not even interesting. The guy Pete makes weird machines and acts as quirky as he can, but it's all forced, trite and poorly executed. There are several scenes where the filmmakers have Pete do something quirky and crazy but its unrealistic enough to seem stupid and forced in there, for example at one point he's driving a car and his sister is asleep next to him (awesome, HIS SISTER, right guys, she's coming along for the trip yah! A crazy "ZANY" trip with his...sister...) anyway he climbs out onto the roof of the car after tying leather straps to the steering wheel and steers from the roof. I don't know how he was accelerating and braking, but screw it right! Its quirky and zany! So many other ridiculous scenes like that, but it's worse because there is terrible dialogue supporting a terrible "story."

I saw this movie years ago, and I can still remember most of it. The newspaper delivery vehicle was great! For some reason, this movie has stuck in my memory as a movie I really enjoyed (versus the thousands of movies I've seen and either can't remember, or worse, want to and can't forget!) I hope I can catch it some time and get it on tape, as it apparently is not available at retail. In the years before the IMDb and Amazon, I can remember checking every video store I saw to see if they had a copy. Except for the non-dubbed version of "Mad Max" (which I got!), no other movie has inspired me to look for it so diligently. The Internet in this case is good and bad - good that it tells me the film is not available, and bad that it tells me the film is not available!