MR ACCIDENT

SYNOPSIS:
Maintenance man for the Sydney Egg House, Roger Crumpkin (Yahoo Serious) is the world's most accident-prone individual. He scrambles everything from eggs to relationships. His obsession for dismantling domestic appliances is a metaphor for his life, which is rapidly falling apart, according to his only friend Lyndon (Grant Piro). Roger meets chicken sexer Sunday Valentine (Helen Dallimore), who is obsessed with extra-terrestrial life, and is smitten. Sunday is staying with neurotic police-officer Rikki Rogerson (Jeanette Cronin) after a row with her tobacco company executive boyfriend Duxton Chevalier (David Field). Duxton has just extorted his way into controlling his brother's (Gary McDonald) egg factory and has big plans. In the meantime Roger unearths a mysterious 'hubcap' that has been buried for millions of years and shows it to Sunday.

"Appealing to the decidedly un-serious side of the brain, Mr Accident is a fun, non-demanding explosion of crazy ideas, fun characters with a lot of laughs. It's a Yahoo Serious world, full of slapstick, satire, spoof and silly humour. Its charm is in its innocence, its greatest strength its ideas, and Yahoo has created characters that zing with spontaneity, say the daftest things, and get into totally insane situations. First there's Roger, whose shock mop of red spiky hair gives him a constant surprised look, as he obsesses with his dismantling fixation. Helen Dallimore's Sunday Valentine is a sugar-sweet individual barbie-doll that wears the kind of ensemble you'd put together in an op shop in the dark. Her passion for green platform lizard skin shoes almost equals her obsession for little green men. In fact all the characters are colourful – even the football-obsessed drawer-hiding dog to the egg-addicted goldfish. They all jump straight out of a comic strip onto the screen (and sometimes out the window!) and grow on you. But the humour is always drawn from things to which we can relate. Who hasn't struggled while trying to close an ironing board? And what about that wonderful restaurant scene, when Roger pours red on wine on the salt he has just spilt on the white tablecloth! There's lots of thumping walls, crashing windows and seriously insane behaviour, all on an egg-centric backdrop with Sydney's Opera House and Harbour Bridge in full glorious view. You may believe that after Siam Sunset, there are no more possibilities for fridge jokes! Wrong! The good old fridge has its moment again. Mr Accident is blatant escapism and through the craziness, we are encouraged to pursue our dream, to nurture our imagination and we are even sent an anti-smoking message to boot. Serious it is not, but the indelible, contagious child-like spirit of the irrepressible Yahoo Serious is alive and well in every frame."
Louise Keller

"There ought to be an advisory notice before the credits start; ‘Please leave all expectations and preconceptions at the door.’ The film takes off at a tangent and unless you begin with an open mind, it will take a while to adjust your mindset and enjoy the film on its own merits, not according to any preconceptions. Mr Accident – while still not up to Yahoo Serious’ flamboyant and inspired debut, Young Einstein – is certainly unique and certainly Australian. It has all the elements of a cartoon, from the story, the colours and the stylised settings to the characters. Serious, an Einstein admirer, also draws on his admiration for Chaplin; there is something of both in all his films, and Mr Accident is a kind of talkie tribute to the great silent comedies whose stock in trade was the pratfall. There are scenes in the film that are not so much pratfalls as serial accidents, one false step triggering an avalanche (sometimes literally) of debris and destruction. Imagination (man’s most important attribute, according to Einstein) is well in evidence, and if some of the mayhem doesn’t quite capture the great chaos scenes from our favourite old cartoons, that’s partly because ‘toon characters can do more than live actors. Serious gets close, though, and I suspect if he were to make a movie in which he didn’t have any dialogue, his screen persona would work superbly. This may also encourage tighter editing, faster pace, which his material requires. His physicality – crazy wig, clownish wardrobe – symbolises the wide eyed, gold hearted innocent who stumbles into love with a like-minded (and like-wardrobed) girl while trying to do good in the world. It’s a serious business, this comedy."
Andrew L. Urban

For more on Yahoo and Mr Accident, visit Yahoo's website (carefully!) www.yahooserious.com