OPENS AUGUST 22, CERT 15, 102 MINS
The Lotto ads and tired TV shows may give Connolly the air of a sell-out these days, but when he stars in a film, he’s memorably fierce. As the hot-blooded but comically baffled Steve (a lawyer turned fisherman in Australia who, when a lightning strike on his boat is deemed an Act of God by his insurance company, chooses to sue God instead), Connolly’s working-class rage burns the screen.
Around him and Judy Davis?the media pundit who backs then beds him?screenwriter Don Watson explores the suit’s implications, for God and man, with rare intelligence. Steve brings Australia’s religious leaders and insurance companies into the dock, facing down their oily lawyer to prove Acts of God are a con. But the media that loves then tramples him, and the financial pressures that cripple his court case, are further evidence of balanced big ideas in a human-scale comedy, let down only by last-reel soppiness