Chur, bro! All Blacks’ surge to 2011 World Cup title led by Stephen Donald immortalis
FOX SPORTS
August 13, 2014 5:57PM
THE All Blacks are many things to many New Zealanders — a source of national pride, an iconic brand, an international rugby powerhouse.
As of this week, they’re also a tele-movie. Chur, bro!
The Kick hit New Zealand TV screens this week, telling the story of the All Blacks’ 2011 World Cup triumph and Stephen “Beaver” Donald’s rise from relative obscurity to national hero with his tournament-winning penalty goal against the French.
The ratings? A respectable 353,930.
The response? Mixed.
“It’s telling that hours after watching I still cannot make up my mind whether it was a greatest piece of kitsch television — when it falls into the ‘so bad it’s great’ category — or just plain bad,” wrote Fairfax New Zealand TV columnist Mike Kilpatrick.
“The Kick isn’t going to win any awards.
“But there was just something so quintessentially Kiwi about it that I can’t help smiling when I think about it.
“So bad it’s good? The Kick and Stephen Donald’s All Blacks career, both.”
It all begins in 2010, with pantomime villain James O’Connor lining up the last-minute conversion that would propel the Wallabies to a nerve-shredding 26-24 victory in Hong Kong.
Or, as New Zealand Heraldwriter Winston Aldworth notes: “It starts, as all great tales of redemption should, with the All Blacks standing under their posts and some Wallaby smartass lining up a match-winning conversion.”
The Hong Kong defeat was widely regarded as Donald’s worst in an All Blacks jersey.
The New Zealand public let him know all about it.
He was down and out.
Rock bottom.
Collecting debts for an unscrupulous Philadelphia loan shark (no, wait, that was Rocky).
It’s all set up beautifully for a cinematic revival.
Action!
“The drama really kicks off when Dan Carter hits the deck like a zebra wandering into a Crusaders’ team-building exercise,” Aldworth continued. “From there, the nightmare run of No 10 injuries is well known — Colin Slade and Aaron Cruden limp out of the campaign. Cometh the hour, cometh the national pariah.
“Ah, happy memories. Donald delivered. We all cheered into the night.”
Yes, yes. And he was called back from a whitebaiting trip to take his place in the All Blacks squad, the World Cup final, mythology.
We get it, Winston. But what did you make of the movie?
“The ending was, oddly, a little flat,” he wrote. “Blame Thierry Dusautaoir. If the French captain had enough narrative awareness to score his nerve-shredding try before Donald’s penalty rather than after it (putting France 7-5 ahead), then the telemovie would have had a truly astonishing finish.
“They could perhaps have made more of the loneliness of the international kicker; the internal processes and doubts that weigh on every top-flight kicker and the hours of solitary training.
“But this by-the-history-book tale was — like Donald — up to the occasion.
“Donald’s story is one of duty and diligence, and this retelling of the fable was worthy tribute.”
The Kick received $2.8 million of government funding. It called upon actors of Xena: Warrior Princess fame. It was even shown to the current All Blacks squad in a private screening ahead of their showdown with the dastardly Aussies this weekend.
“Unassuming centre Conrad Smith joked that seeing himself onscreen would be the ‘least favourite’ part of the screening,” the NZ Herald noted. “He and teammates Kieran Read, Richie McCaw, Jerome Kaino and Ma’a Nonu appeared in an upbeat mood.”
They were presumably less buoyant after the first hour, which detailed the kind of treatment New Zealand’s players can expect from a demanding public should they lose their grip on the Bledisloe.
“There were times when it wasn’t hell of enjoyable to be living in the country ... after Hong Kong,” the real-life Donald told Neil Reid of the Sunday News ahead of the movie’s release.
“When things are starting to happen like hate mail starting to show up, it was getting a little bit out of control.”
Reid continued: “The contents of one of those letters was the subject of a scene in The Kick, which would screen on TV One next Sunday.
“The actor who plays Donald, David de Lautour, was shown reading the letter which described the future World Cup winner as one of the worst-ever All Blacks and a ‘worthless sack of s***’.”
Most critics opined that de Lautour made a decent fist of playing the role of Donald.
What of the other casting choices?
“Some of the players wouldn’t have looked out of place in the president’s grade team I used to run out in, and none of us wore jerseys without multiple XXs on the label,” Kilpatrick wrote.
“Others, like Richie McCaw, were mind-blowing in how unlike the person they were supposed to be.
“It’s inevitable when we see McCaw on television all the time that whomever played him was going to stick out like a sore thumb — but that doesn’t make it feel less wrong. It was made even worse by McCaw appearing in adverts during breaks in the film itself.”
And how about the script?
“The only time when it didn’t seem forced were the moments when Beaver and Kaks (Richard Kahui) were relaxing together and talking like friends,” he continued. “There were also too many moments where I think the scriptwriters were trying to be clever.
“’The record’s gone. Along with my World Cup chances, I reckon,’ said Donald after his Hong Kong horror show. Or ‘Kieran Read? Never heard of him’ said his Principal after Counties Manukau sign him for the NPC.
“That kind of stuff is only funny if ... no, scratch that, it’s never funny. We know the story and how it ends. We know who Kieran Read is. We don’t need the wink, wink stuff.”
I guess we won’t be holding our breath for a sequel. not for another 20 odd years anyway!!!!
http://www.foxsports.com.au/rugby/ch...-1227023420996
