An appropriately bizarre addition to this year’s Sydney Underground Film Festival, Greener Grass wants you to think it’s better on the other side.
And this is another side, of something; for as much as the production design and recognisably human performers may suggest this is part of our dear planet, the happenings and happenstances moreover reflect a world entire unto something far from our own.
Bright colours, braces, parents in eternal arrested development, biology unrecognisable and network television (read: Interdimensional Cable) that would make Dan Harmon proud, by the time one of our youngest characters turns into a canine this is but par for the course.
Accomplishing said magic in an excellent example of lo-fi practical effects, while the film does lapse into repetition following it’s initial setup it is at this juncture (as well as the very welcome introduction of D’Arcy Carden’s Miss Human) that Greener Grass notably picks up. Fans of The Good Place will predictably relish Carden’s turn here; with her adopting some of the now famous Janet deadpan in the delivery of perhaps Greener Grass’ most macabre, outlandish material.
Revelling in a few choice scenes where the practicalities of raising a son turned dog make themselves clear, a more subtle reminder of the boy’s now enhanced hearing is, forgive me, one of the best in show. An aside where father and son run through the park playing catch, the child having in human form proved himself adverse to any contact with sports-ball, is without question the best sequence herein as even this genre’s detractors (if this can be so stratified) surely cannot help but laugh at such a revelrous, outwardly innocent scene transpiring amidst such havoc.
You’ll know from this description moreover whether this is your film or one to steer clear from, yet if you’re attending Sydney Underground and need your anomalous fix Greener Grass might very well be the go.
Greener Grass, which screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, screens as part of the Sydney Underground Film Festival on Saturday September 14 and Sunday September 15
on Falkenscreen
