Movies about young people doing crazy things while at college have a long history, from Animal House to Revenge of the Nerds to Old School to Neighbors. As t
Wake In Fright (aka
Outback) and Nicolas Roeg’s
Walkabout. Though directed by foreigners (Canadian and English, respectively), they were uniquely Australian stories that set the mold for much of what was to come.
And what came was that, by the decade’s end, such homegrown directors as Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, Gillian Armstrong, George Miller, Fred Schepisi, and Philip Noyce were considered among the world’s leading emergent celluloid talents. While movies from Australia (barring the occasional international production shot there) were seldom seen abroad before 1970, by the 1980s they’d become widely exported and acclaimed.
A couple new features are very much in synch with the templates set by those two original “Australian New Wave” classics, with
Drunk Bus in Kent, Ohio, home to Kent State University.
The comedy-drama focuses on Michael (played by Charlie Tahan, best-known for the Netflix series
Ozark), a recent college graduate stuck in Kent, where he drives the campus “drunk bus” in a loop each night, picking up inebriated passengers. Things change for him when he s befriended by a tattoo-faced Samoan-American security guard, Pineapple (Pineapple Tangaroa). The movie co-stars Kara Hayward (
Moonrise Kingdom), comedian Dave Hill and Will Forte (
Saturday Night Live and
The Last Man on Earth).
Written by Chris Molinaro, it’s actually based on LaGanke’s experience of driving the campus bus at Kent State, where Tangaroa was his security detail.
Young cast hits the mark in funny college-set film Drunk Bus culturemap.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from culturemap.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.