Spud: May be one-joke movie

Graham Weir, Jamie Royal.
Writer and Director: Donovan March
Cinema: Eastgate
Running time: 105 minutes
Type of film: South Africa: Schoolboy romp
Are restriction: 12
John Van De Ruit, some years ago, wrote a best-selling novel about first year South African students assigned to Michael House.
The year is 1990 and Nelson Mandela is understandably on everybody’s mind, even these highly jittery freshmen.
As is virtually compulsory, we are shown everything that happens through the eyes of one student, John Milton (Troye Sivan).
Assigned to a dorm with seven classmates, John is initially the butt of the group and the movie-goer feels nervous about what may be coming.
Fearful that this may be a one-joke film, based on our learning right from the beginning that his dorm-mates have denominated him “Spud”, because of the insignificant size of his penis. Which they have exposed to the light of day on the first day of classes.
I was happily surprised that – and very wisely – in the course of the film of his classmates are given the role of clown.
That which does cling to Spud from the very beginning is his understandably natural interest and involvement with a girl back home, as well as with one, somewhat older, who visits Spud’s school for a theatrical production.
Repeatedly I gave credit to the makers of the film for not going down the usual roads traversed in such films. In time John is given the need to face both triumph and disaster and treat both those impostors the same.”
Of the seven dormates, John draws closest to Gecko, also uncomplimentary named by the dorm-mates for small size and peculiar habits.
Well-portrayed sadness enters the scene with the under stated tragedy of Gecko’s death and funeral.
A truly unexpected highlight of the film was the characterisation in the role of principal teacher, the 72 year old actor from Weston-super-Mare, England, John Cleese. Ac ting against type, he is, in this film, virtually a falling down inebriate. And burdened with a highly critical wife. It is he who discovers the well hidden theatrical talent in our Spud and assigns to him the plum of a role of Oliver in the school’s big-hit production.
One unfortunate element in the film depicts the dragged in sexual relationship between Rambo (one of Spud’s dormates) and the fully mature and well-endowed – music teacher. Dragged in if only to “put bums on seats” in cinemas.