nerdydad1
Ah, the trouble with having to make a movie last 90 minutes.At its core, "Oddball" is a wonderful story. Swampy Marsh (marvellously played by Shane Jacobson), is a widowed chicken farmer with a lovable but trouble-prone dog (Oddball); while his conservationist daughter is struggling with a penguin colony being decimated by foxes. Marsh has an inspiration - get Oddball to guard penguins from foxes, in the same way his other dogs guard his chickens. It works brilliantly, and along the way he bonds with his granddaughter and daughter.Unfortunately, this story would struggle to stretch to an hour. So the movie is padded out with a rather formulaic sub-plot about a rival business having a vested interest in the penguin colony's demise. This sub-plot also resolves rather strangely and abruptly.Yes I recommend this movie, for the performance of Jacobsen, some very touching family scenes between the three main characters, and the delightful dog and penguins. But I wish the sub-plot wasn't there, or at least was handled differently.
faaus72
Oddball is, if a bit formulaic, well done and rewarding.The intertwined elements of family-love, nature's treasures and a heartwarming dog combine for our pleasure.The location of the story is one of magical beauty.The characters are well-drawn and believable. The fact that it's based on a true story makes it even more special.
tricorne-u8
The precept for this story was brilliant, the casting was predictable but the direction was just woefully short of the mark. This simple little story about a dog rescuing the day, became entwined in an impossibly unbelievable romance, all for the sake of an unlikeable single mum and her implausible relationship with a US Event Manager!? And somewhere at the end, an unknown hero presents himself inebriated but utterly devoid of any character or plot development as the not very well developed heroine's final love interest.All this at the expense of her daughter, a canine hero, an endangered species and a pathetic portrayal of an eccentric chicken farmer; (no offense Shane).Well, this is what happens when Australian government officers get involved in making feature films! Everything is about Tourism, isn't it?
tomsview
It was W.C. Fields who said, 'Never work with animals or children.' He may have had a point because the actors in this film become almost irrelevant when Oddball, a beautiful Maremma sheepdog, shares the screen with the fairy penguins.The film is based on real events. Apparently, Middle Island off the Victorian coast at Warrnambool, used to be home to a thousand fairy penguins until foxes started to snack down on them, reducing the population to just ten of the little guys.Finally, a chicken farmer, Swampy (Shane Jacobson), and his dog, Oddball, come to their rescue and rid the island of foxes after hunting and trapping had failed.The film is described as family fare, and Oddball steals every scene he is in, but I think children would be a little restless with the amount of story taken up with the affairs of the adults. Maybe the filmmakers tried to cram in too much. Along with the case for conservation, every character in the film seems to have a back-story. But it's all at the expense of more time with Oddball and the real stars of the show - the fairy penguins.No doubt the scenes with the penguins would have been hard to do, but the film could have used a lot more of the confrontation between Oddball and the foxes - there are few long shots and much of the action seems either very close-up or off camera. Here and there the film gets to the heart of the matter - the human drama can't compete with the tension in the scene on the island when the fox sticks its head into the fairy penguin's burrow, or when Oddball saves the egg from going over the cliff.Although no rival to "Babe", "Oddball" is nicely made, and no one will hate it, but I feel that the filmmakers missed the opportunity to make it more memorable than it is.
AD
