Calmest Reviews

MasterChef Australia (2009– )

Feelgood reality TV with food

[7/10 · 11 August 2010]

Masterchef is a reality TV show. It is named after a British TV cookery competition.

The cast is made up of cooking enthusiasts who take part in a series of cooking challenges and face eliminations.

At the end of the season, one person is awarded the main prize.

The bulk of the show is devoted to the cast talking to camera about how they felt during the challenges and also to the hosts talking about what they thought of the performances in the challenges. In many of the episodes the hosts taste the food and give feedback or a score. Many parts of the cooking processes are also shown.

This show became a huge "watercooler" hit within Australia because of a universal interest in food and because, with the minimal swearing and absence of violence or nudity, this was perfect family viewing. Another appealing aspect was the decision to portray the contestants as co-operative rather than cut-throat as in previous reality TV.

The watchability of this show lies in the casting of appealing people; the fact that they seem to be decent makes you care what happens to them and want to return to them. The continual recaps and repetitions of footage in this show mean that it is highly watchable at the busy time of evening that it is shown.

Planta 4ª (2003)

If you put Hawkeye and Hunnicut in hospital as teenage cancer patients then it would end up something like this.

[8/10 · 6 October 2006]

I turned on TV the other night to find this playing(good old SBS, best TV channel in the world which also happens to be free-to-air). Seeing 3 or 4 bald young boys made me curious so I stood there watching a bit longer. It was a nice story but I watched to the end for two other reasons: The really nice shots of the action in the hospital corridors and those beautiful boy actors. Their enthusiasm really seems to lift the movie up a notch. Great casting and a great effort from those kids.

Lacasito 01 mentioned that the English subtitles weren't up to scratch. I can only recommend that you find a copy of the version that I watched here in Australia. The slang and the swearing are translated into Aussie by the subtitlers on my favourite network. I sometimes get a bit of a shock when I sit down to watch a foreign movie and the characters are spouting lines that I could have heard down at the local pub. I think for non Australians though, that this might add just the flavour of foreigness that you need in the dialogue of a foreign-language film.