Editorial: The Twins on Topp of the world

Everyone needs to get a load of the Topp Twins. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

With all the fuss that gets made when a Kiwi movie succeeds internationally, it's easy to forget that we have a lot more misses than hits.

No shame in that: most Hollywood movies don't pay for themselves and only a system of creative accounting keeps the system afloat.

So no one should get too down in the mouth that The Vintner's Luck, the new film by Niki (Whale Rider) Caro has taken a pasting from the commercially savvy critics at the Toronto Film Festival.

The trade magazine Variety described the adaptation of Elizabeth Knox's bestseller as "drearily literal-minded" and The Hollywood Reporter's reviewer said it was a "an overblown work of amazing silliness".

Its box office prospects may be grim, but look on the bright side: a couple of yodelling lesbians from Huntly have set the town on fire. Jools and Lynda Topp, the stars of Leanne Pooley's documentary The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, have given Toronto audiences a taste of the very best of Kiwi. The raucously entertaining film, which is as much a social history of the Topps' generation as it is a portrait of a pair of incomparable entertainers, got a standing ovation at its festival screenings. Variety gushed about the "crew-cut demi-goddesses [from] a country where the national character includes a warped sense of humour".

It seems to prove - if more proof were needed - that we make our biggest mark on the world by being ourselves, rather than trying to beat the big players at their own game. Let's hope someone gets a DVD in front of Dave Letterman and he plays a bit on The Late Show when John Key drops in this week. Everyone needs to get a load of these girls.