Film Review - Blinky Bill the Movie (2015)

Blinky Bill the Movie is the newest instalment of the character (played here by Ryan Kwanten) and is a new adventure not based off of the book series, the story here sees Blinky venturing out to the mythical Sea of White Dragons to find his long lost father (Richard Roxburgh) but this adventure could prove to be a tricky one to take.

I was a fan of the original Blinky Bill instalments from the 1990s first being the Yoram Gross film from 92 and later on the TV series which aired on the ABC so when I heard there was going to be a new film it was one that I immediately had to see just to know what it was like more than anything else.

And happily I was not disappointed as this was a fun animated adventure I thought, the first reason for this is the story itself it's not trying to repeat the Bart Simpson esque antics of the characters from the 90s and instead make him more of a likeable ol larrikin on the search for adventure, there is a fair amount of Australian lingo in the film and it adds to the charm of the piece.

The second reason is the performances, Kwanten throws his all into voicing Blinky and his enthusiasm easily caught on for me, I also liked Roxburgh in his role plus David Wenham, Barry Humphries, Barry Otto, Toni Collette and Rufus Sewell also pitch in good voice work here and you can tell they all had a good time working on this film.

Unfortunately I could also see why the film failed at the box office here in Australia and the reason I feel this has happened is that there is really no audience for this film, the people that know who Blinky is are people my age (children of the 90s essentially) and children today are so inundated with that sort of entertainment that they won't know who Blinky is, similar happened with the Tintin film from 2011, people my age knew of him but not kids today and as a result that film along with this one struggled to find an audience in cinemas.

And so that was Blinky Bill mate, a good fun family film (far too many animated productions these days are so emotionally heavy handed to the point of it feeling like blackmail or manipulation) with some good ol Dinki Di Aussie lingo and a sense of adventure, 3 out of 5.