There's plenty of zesty slapstick, along with a relentless torrent of four-letter words in all cases and conjugations.

The film falls short because it falls between two stools: as a reminder of a shameful period in our recent history it's too interested in finding cheap laughs, and as a comedy it's just too painful and ugly.

Down Under's humour can be a little one note (xenophobic idiot and/or agitated party does something stupid, repeat) but there are a number of laugh-out-loud moments and the cast and crew do a uniformly strong job executing a difficult premise.

Hard to watch at times, that's the point of a comedy trying to expose a thorny topic still dividing Australia, an approach we could use a lot more of.