by RUSSELL BAILLIE
(Herald rating: * * )
Aussie actors Hugo Weaving and David Wenham have shown they can be terrific in a variety of roles, given the right parts, script and direction.
While this romantic caper comedy notches up yet more characters for both men - hapless romantic lead for Weaving; philandering
but otherwise solid and successful Jewish family man for Wenham - you have to wonder if their respective scripts went to the right address, and just how closely they read them.
For Russian Doll is a convoluted, infrequently funny, oddity of a film. Its story might seem like a Down Under variation on Green Card, but it's seemingly desperate to not be just another empty romantic comedy.
Which might explain the miscasting of Weaving or Wenham in roles requiring a bit of charm and shallow starpower to carry them off. It's a pity they got actors instead, really.
The doll of the title is Katia (Novikova), the brash and buxom and leopard skin-clad Jewish Russian gal who comes to Sydney as a mail-order bride only to find her intended is dead upon her arrival.
The first live bloke she meets is the-shoulder-to-cry-on Ethan (Wenham) and soon the pair are engaged in a torrid affair - but he's married and her visa is running out. Meanwhile, Ethan's friend Harvey (Weaving), a wannabe crime writer turned private detective, has found the supposed love of his life on the other end of his prying camera and is a moping bachelor yet again.
So the well-do-do Ethan pushes Harvey and Katia into a marriage of convenience. It seems simple enough until Ethan's wife, Miriam (Frith), insists on organising a big wedding.
Of course, all does not go to plan.
But by then, care of director Kazantzidis's clumsy execution, Weaving's dour presence, Wenham's two-dimensional character and more Russian stereotypes than a festival of Bond films, our interest has voluntarily deported itself home.
Cast: Hugo Weaving, David Wenham, Natalia Novikova
Director: Stavros Kazantzidis
Rating: M
Running time: 83 mins
Screening: Rialto, Bridgeway
