Knocked for Six

Knocked for Six is an Australian comedy about a group of cricketers who go on tour in India. Inspired by true events, the film follows Teddy, the president of an amateur cricket group, who brings his team to India to play in a tournament. Teddy soon realises that his two best players, Ricky and Stav, are moving on and are now more interested in their families than in the game. Faced with much better Indian teams and with his own players considering the trip a mere holiday away from their families, how can Teddy convince them to win?

The film is based on director Boyd Hicklin’s 2005 documentary Save Your Legs; the story is mildly interesting but wholly unbelievable. Outlandish as the true events may originally have been, Knocked for Six throws in too much and gives itself too little time. We get to know only five of the 11-man team (the rest feel like extras) and the film stretches itself too far with one drug scene and a slightly desperate Bollywood dance number at the end. Elsewhere, the film feels either badly thought-out or heavily cut. The villain, for instance, is introduced over halfway through.

Knocked for Six is very much a “man-child” comedy, with quite a few diarrhoea and vomit jokes thrown in thanks to Teddy’s inability to deal with Indian food. These moments aside, it’s a reasonably pleasant though overly masculine comedy about men leaving to one side their childhood dreams and becoming adults. The script is not particularly new and the threadbare story really could have upped the stakes much more, but there is a decent feeling of fun and camaraderie about the film that makes it reasonably entertaining.

Matthew McKernan

Knocked for Six is released nationwide on 13^th June 2014.

Watch the trailer for Knocked for Six here: