''Fat Pizza'' is a 2003 Australian comedy film based on the ''
Pizza
Pizza (, ) is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually round, flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as various types of sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, onions ...
'' television series, both of which were created, produced, written and starred in by
Paul Fenech
Paul Fenech (born 21 November 1972) is an Australian filmmaker, film and television actor, director, producer and writer. He is best known for writing, directing, producing and starring in the television series ''Pizza'', ''Swift and Shift Cou ...
.
It was produced by
Village Roadshow Pictures
Village Roadshow Pictures is the American subsidiary of the Australian co-producer and co-financier of major Hollywood motion pictures established in 1986. It is a division under Village Roadshow Entertainment Group (VREG), which in turn is o ...
and
SBS Independent
SBS independent (SBSi) operated as the commissioning house for Australia's multicultural public broadcaster, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), between August 1994 and December 2007. It was instituted via the landmark "Creative Nation" cul ...
(uncredited).
It was filmed in the
Canterbury-Bankstown
Canterbury-Bankstown is a customary region of Sydney, Australia, in the south-western suburbs. The area is located around the Bankstown railway line, to the west of the St George region and to the south of the Inner West region. The suburbs o ...
region of
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
, specifically
Bass Hill
Bass Hill, () a suburb of local government area City of Canterbury-Bankstown, is located 23 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and is a part of the South-western Sydney regi ...
and
Chullora
Chullora, a suburb in the City of Canterbury-Bankstown local government area, is located 15 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is part of the Greater Western Sydney region. The ...
. Scenes were also filmed in the
Hills District of Sydney, at
Kellyville and
Norwest Business Park
The Norwest Business Park is a business park in the suburbs of Norwest, New South Wales, Norwest and Bella Vista, New South Wales, Bella Vista in the Local government areas of New South Wales, local government area of The Hills Shire in Sydney, N ...
. It was released by
Roadshow Entertainment
Roadshow Entertainment (formerly known as Roadshow Home Video from 1982–1993) is an Australian home video, production and distribution company that is a division of Village Roadshow (formerly Roadshow Home Video and Roadshow Entertainment) th ...
on 10 April 2003 and made $2,146,843 at the box office.
Plot
The film is set in Canterbury-Bankstown and opens with the protagonist, Pauly (Paul Fenech), claiming that the following events are all true and that real names are used.
Pauly arrives late at work to find his employer, Bobo (Johnny Boxer), has hired a new delivery driver, Davo (Jason Davis). Pauly explains to Davo that Bobo is crazy from being a forty-year-old virgin who lives with his mother, but is getting married the next day to a Vietnamese mail-order bride, Lin Chow Bang (Tuyen Le), who is
sneaking into the country illegally. Pauly then shows Davo the “Former Employee Hall of Shame”, which features Sahib (Desan Padayachee), who was forced out for being too polite and not tough enough. In retribution for being fired, Sahib and his friends opened their own pizzeria, Phat Pizza.
Later on, Pauly gets into a traffic accident with clown mascot Ronnie Mcdoggle (George Kapiniaris), whom Pauly mocks and assaults. Dozens more clown mascots surround Pauly, forcing him to single handedly fight them all off, after which the clowns decide to back down and Pauly flees the scene in his delivery car.
Meanwhile, Davo is late delivering a pizza to a house of
bikies. While looking around the delivery address, he finds a drug lab producing homemade steroids and a large amount of marijuana. He is then discovered by the bikie gang who fight with and subdue Davo. The bikies are about to kill Davo as the lab catches light and explodes as a result of Davo dropping a joint during the fight. Davo and the bikies survive the explosion, but Davo is able to escape. Back at the Pizzeria, Davo meets fellow delivery driver Sleek the Elite (Paul Nakad), who tells him how he feigns romantic interest in unattractive women so he can meet and sleep with their attractive friends. Sleek then details how he has another delivery driver, Habib (Tahir Bilgic) secretly film his sexual encounters without the women's knowledge.
While Pauly is getting ready to go clubbing with the other delivery drivers, Sahib steals his employee uniform from his clothes line and uses it to sneak into the pizzeria and tamper with the phonelines, redirecting all incoming calls to steal their business. Upon leaving, he is spotted by a group of the clown mascots who mistake him for Pauly and beat him up. As a result of their tampering, Phat Pizza then receives a phone call from the bikie gang asking for their address. During the night out with the other delivery drivers, Sleek runs into Toula (Rebel Wilson), one of the girls he has been leading on. Toula and her friends drug Sleek and abduct him. Upon awaking, they tell Sleek that they are sick of men using them to date their attractive friends and rape him as an act of revenge.
Come the next day, Sleek is on his way to the wedding when he is attacked by a coalition of organised crime syndicates who have allied against Sleek because the mafia leaders’ daughters were victims of Sleek and Habib's voyeurism. Scared for his life, Sleek calls Rocky for help, who rallies a Lebanese mod to come to Sleek's defence. However, Rocky discovers that his sister was one of the girls Sleek slept with and had Habib film, leading him to turn on Sleek and join the gangs in beating him up. Bobo, his bride and their guests discover at the wedding that the priest quadruple booked the church, causing the priest to hastily marry all of the couples. Pauly then declares in a cut-away that “At this point, all that was left to do was go and get pissed”.
In the post-credit scenes, Sleek calls Bobo from the hospital to ask for workers compensation only to be fired. The bikie gang members then kill the Phat Pizza employees mistaking them for the staff of Fat Pizza.
Cast
Reception
The film received a mostly positive response from critics.
Adrian Martin
Adrian Martin (born 1959) is an Australian film and arts critic. He now lives in Malgrat de Mar in Spain. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University. His work has appeared in many magazines, journals and n ...
, a PhD in Film Style, gave the film a 3 out of 5 rating, praising it for its strong, outrageous jokes, saying they elevate it above most Australian comedies. Martin also commended its energy, brash confidence and appeal to its target audience. Louise Keller of Urban Cinefile said that the film's offensive humor was “very funny” and praised it for being irreverent, high-energy and over-the-top.
Controversy
The film was a source of controversy because of its use of vulgar humor, racial stereotypes and ethnic slurs (including choco, for non-white people). Some have argued that the portrayal of ethnic-minority characters in the film links vulgarity to ethnic identity and social class. The film is also accused of disingenuously passing off its representations of ethnic minorities as satire to excuse its harmful implications. Such it is an example of self-stereotyping, like other Australian ethnic-minority lead comedies are.
A counterargument to this that has been raised is that the film gives representation to ethnic minorities, such and Lebanese and Vietnamese people, that were previously absent from Australian comedy and that it is an example of ethnic minorities representing themselves and pushing against mainstream representations.
Therefore, Fat Pizza—among other films—marks a shift in the representation of minorities in Australian media away from sensitive, serious portrayals towards market driven entertainment (Khorana, 2019). The favored reception of the film is argued to represent a large, youthful, ethnic-minority audience looking for an outlet against being minoritized in Australian media.
Paul Fenech stated in an interview “It’s a very hard country for a lot of people to survive, and that’s why people come to my shows, doesn’t matter whether they are Greek or bogan.”
Sequel
The television show for which the film was adapted from went on to be renewed for another two seasons, which aired in 2005 and 2007 on SBS. A crossover film between Fat Pizza and Housos – another television show created by Paul Fenech – was released on November 27, 2014. The Fat Pizza television show was revived for a sixth season in 2019 by Paul Fenech and premiered on 7mate, November, 2019.
Trivia
* This was the last appearance of Sleek the Elite in the franchise until 2014's ''Fat Pizza vs. Housos.''
*The serial killer featured in the film is based on a reference to a famous Australian serial killer
Ivan Milat
Ivan Robert Marko Milat (27 December 1944 – 27 October 2019) was an Australian serial killer who was convicted in the backpacker murders in 1996. Commonly known as the Backpacker Murderer, Milat captured, assaulted, robbed and murdered two me ...
.
* The scene in the Northern Territory with the baby and the dingo is a reference to
Lindy Chamberlain
Alice Lynne "Lindy" Chamberlain-Creighton (née Murchison; born 4 March 1948) is a New Zealand–born Australian woman who was wrongfully convicted in one of Australia's most publicised murder trials. Accused of killing her nine-week-old daught ...
and the
Death of Azaria Chamberlain
Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain (11 June 1980 – 17 August 1980) was a nine-week-old Australian baby girl who was killed by a dingo on the night of the 17 August 1980 during a family camping trip to Uluru in the Northern Territory. Her body ...
.
* Fat Pizza (2003) was the first film Rebel Wilson starred in.
*The character David Cockerfield is a parody of real-life magician David Copperfield.
See also
*
List of Australian films
1890s–1930s
Australian filmmakers were at the forefront of cinema and film, having created what is considered the first feature-length narrative film with the release of ''The Story of the Kelly Gang'' and other early films by directors Jo ...
*
''Pizza'' (TV series)
*
Fat Pizza vs. Housos
''Fat Pizza vs. Housos'' is an Australian film based on the combination of the stories and characters of the SBS series ''Pizza'' and the comedy series ''Housos'', both created by Paul Fenech. The film began screening in Australian cinemas on 2 ...
*
Pizza delivery in popular culture
Pizza delivery is a service in which a pizzeria or pizza chain Delivery (commerce), delivers a pizza to a customer. An order is typically made either by telephone, or over the internet, in which the customer can request pizza type and size, a ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
Fat Pizza at the Internet Movie DatabaseFat Pizza: The Movie at the National Film and Sound ArchiveRotten Tomatoes Rating Page
2003 films
Australian adventure comedy films
2000s adventure comedy films
Fictional restaurants
Films set in restaurants
Films set in Sydney
Seafaring films
2003 comedy films
2000s English-language films