ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

howie73 After her promising debut, Love and other Catastrophes, made on a shoestring budget and employing mostly ex-Aussie soap stars, Emma Kate Groghan misfired with this Friends-style "comedy" - if you can call it that. While her debut embodied verve and a vitality borne of its low-budget, Strange Planet has the opposite effect, mainly because of its bigger budget. With more money, the sets and photography are better but the acting and story are substandard Home and Away fare with a touch of melancholic romanticism thrown in to evoke quasi-seriousness. The acting is okay at times but most of the actors can't really summon enough gusto to deal with the cliché-ridden script. The film is only really notable for the inclusion of Naomi Watts who coincidentally made the pilot for Mulholland Drive the same year. Visually, the film resembles an ecstasy-induced advert with bright tones and little else. One to avoid.

maritas4 I thought it was a pretty good movie. The acting was good and the story was well told. It's one of those *feel good movies* that you know how it's going to turn out but you want to watch and see how it all ends anyway.

Yossarian- Like a few other Australian entries from 1999, 'Strange Planet' is gorgeously filmed but appallingly scripted and acted. The story sees two sets of three friends (three girls and three guys) who stumble to and from bad relationships. In a nutshell, that's basically the plot. Spanning a year, the film certainly covers a lot of time. And neatly too. Each new month is visually introduced by some stunning time-lapse sequences of Syndey. However, once plot and character development come into swing, then the movie just falls flat on its face. Dialogue feels too sparse and wanna-be offbeat, not to mention being so predictable and underdeveloped that it feels more like a synopsis than dialogue. The 'witty' nihilist-turned-romantic banter about relationships is anything but. The plot likewise feels all too familiar, and the ending comes paradoxically unsurprising and undeveloped, so undeveloped that the last shot (an overhead of the six eating breakfast) feels like an insulting attempt at gratifying the audience. Yet another sad triumph of of style over substance. Try 'The Big Night Out' for similar results.2/5

hammy-3 If, like me, you liked _Love and other catatastrophes_, then you'll probably like this too. It's not quite a sequel, but it does follow young Aussies thru the period just after college. It concerns three fairly likeable guys and three not-unattractive girls in this in the awkward but enjoyable phase of life, and views their often quirky attitudes to relationships with a non-judgemental eye. It's full of humour, and it's only major faults are that some of the characters and plotlines are a bit cliched and you can see the ending coming from a long way back.