After tackling Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory in festivals past, the team at Imperial Panda decided to give Mad Max the remix treatment. Using visuals from each film in the Trilogy (although it seemed to concentrate heavily on Beyond Thunderdome) as a starting point, the audio track was performed live.
The script took a completely silly route, leaving nothing of the original plot, so a deep knowledge of the original trilogy was not necessary to enjoy this show. The story instead centered on Max’s dream to dance which, while as far removed from the tone of the Mad Max films, was wholly plausible given the creative editing of the footage. It was a slick mish mash of movie sequences including a number of original visuals, such as titles and credits, as well as plenty of clever snippets from Mel Gibson’s film output and Tina Turner’s music videos.
Jokes were a little hit and miss, often raising a smile rather than generating belly laughs. A particularly off colour subplot was met with groans at every mention and and they weren’t afraid to get a little crude in their attempts to obtain laughs. There were some current references included and a number of clever swipes at Mel Gibson’s colourful behaviour off screen. A few jokes referencing Melbourne and the Comedy Festival were nice touches for this particular run of the show.
The voice actors gave spirited performances through the use of wacky voices, tackling a large range of characters. After a run of the show in Sydney they have delivery and cues down perfectly.
Some times it seemed that the script was structured such that the dialogue had to accurately match the lips of the screen actors. This resulted in some silent patches where the scene became very stilted and awkward. Either some further editing of the video or not bothering to match lips would have improved this. Given the lighthearted spirit of the show, I’m sure the punters wouldn’t have minded if dialogue was heard through a closed mouth.
The cast could have easily gotten away with just talking over the footage with the odd vocal sound effect but the team went all out to provide a quite immersive experience. A foley artist used a variety of implements to create sound effects for the scenes which were usually amusing in their silliness. Music, both prerecorded and performed live, played an important role in not only setting the scene and mood, but was often the source of jokes. They played with the concept of subverting what we heard compared to what we saw (In one case an Australian theme accompanied visuals that were definitely not supposed to be Australia). Other films were cleverly referenced through their distinctive songs providing some humour of recognition.
The Mad Max Remix was a wonderfully silly show that gave a new dimension to some classics of Australian cinema.
Visit the Comedy Festival Website for booking details.