Few cinemagoers have turned up for Rebel Wilson’s directorial debut, The Deb, which opened with the kind of dismal box office return a local lemonade stand might rival. Which is a shame: it’s a fun, frothy, sassy musical – hardly a masterpiece, but an enjoyable adaptation of the stage production of the same name. It abides by the crucial musical dictum – open strongly – with the rambunctious teen anthem Fuck My Life, before settling into the story of a woke city slicker (Charlotte MacInnes) who is sent to the small country town where her cousin (Natalie Abbott) lives. But the film has already dropped from 15th spot to 20th on the Australian box office charts, taking just $237 a screen in its second week.
It’s possible that The Deb will experience a second life on streaming, though this seems unlikely, especially given the doomed aura hanging over it, the production being plagued by legal dramas. It’ll hardly inspire more confidence in the Australian movie musical, though neither did the box office returns of the previous one – the partly Australia-funded Robbie Williams biopic Better Man, which was fabulous but tanked at the box office anyway. Or the one before that – 2016’s Emo: The Musical, though that film was always going to have niche appeal.
