Avoca-don't

Dude this film is actually so strong in its premise, especially for the musical genre which can so often get bogged down by pacing issues. I laughed so hard at this, as a millennial who gets tagged in every single NZHerald fucking article about avocadoes, millennials and home ownership (with a BA too lol), this hits home. Only a couple of issues with the syncing of audio, the end felt a little too forced etc., but still an outside shot of making the regional finals I think (based on previous years' quality). Got one of my audience votes!

Was really funny and executed very well. The singing angry father was definitely was my highlight of the night! Cheers for the laughs team!

There’s a new supermarket in the city centre that opened its doors last month for the first time. If you’re the kind of person that enjoys beetroot salsa and lentil chips then the supermarket is probably the place for you. A friend of mine jokingly labelled the place as “offensively middle-class”. “Avoca-don’t” is in no way offensive, but it is certainly middle-class. It is a clever, catchy, middle-class, millennial piss-take and it’s hard not to love every minute of it. One of the great strengths of this film comes from the fact that this is a conscious middle-class parody. The team are aware of how middle-class their avocado love and home ownership desires are and they are willing to make fun of them. I’ve always felt that the best humour comes from people that have a good awareness of who they are. I think “Avoca-don’t” shows that to be true. While all the actors were great, the stand out performance was from the father. There’s just something so desperately middle-class about a dad telling his son to take his head out of the clouds and to instead start thinking about saving for a home. The musical genre presents its own unique difficulties and there were parts of the film where it felt as if the pace or ‘momentum’ had slowed down a just a bit. This was the case when the young man is speaking to the Herald about his acquired success. However, the music itself was brilliant. Whoever thought of integrating the Wilhelm scream into the music deserves an avocado. This is definitely one of the strongest films from the heat.

An avocado loving young man is forced to reconsider his life when his typically middle-class parents berate him for his excessive life style choice. This musical produced a really positive response from the audience as it seemed to strike an accord with a certain demographic and poke fun at aspects of modern society. To be honest, much of this was lost on me and I was therefore simply in it for the musical experience that I hoped would invest me in the character arc. So did it? First the positives: in general a consistent look was achieved and a few focus issues aside the visuals hit the mark. Malcolm Lyall as the dad stole the show in his brief scene (more please), delivering one of the two really effective musical pieces of this short; the other being at the end with the strong vocal delivery of local musician Ella Waswo. The rap did incorporate the Wilhelm scream rather cleverly and subtlety - which is either genius or irrelevant if you didn't hear it. I do wonder about some of your choices and execution in places. The sync was out. Only slightly, but enough to be distracting & a killer with this genre. More distracting for me was the use of subtitles which served little or no purpose and perhaps demonstrated a lack of confidence in the audience's ability to understand your lyrics; which I'd argue was misplaced. Considering the soundtrack was recorded just fine, I'd have loved to just hear it as the titles have the potential to take focus away from the action. At least you didn't sink to the level of having a bouncing karaoke ball. The ending for me also felt a bit tacked on and left me confused - who was she and why are you introducing her at the film's end? I also thought some of the pacing didn't quite work with a few scenes overstaying their welcome and me getting an ever-so-slight feeling of "sameness" in delivery. As musicals go this is one of the better ones delivered in CHCH over the last few years and yep, it could make the finals which will be richly deserved for not wimping out with this genre.

Musical, Teams either rise to the occasion or they dont, Congratulations Cruel World Productions! This was a DELIGHTFUL film. The music and lyrics are GREAT, the performances are great, the story was simple and effective. Its absolutly the kind of quiky comedy that plays well at 48hours, and while i like to hate on this out of context in the face of your film i cant help but smile, I can’t wait to watch it again, likely at the city finals. I just rewatched your film from last year too, very funny. As mentioned in other reviews the sync goes in and out throughout the songs, and the overall production value dosen’t quite match the quality of the rest of the film. But christchurch has never had a problem looking past production value to see the gold inside the film. And direct from my notes, it’s a musical, which means hightened reality, I would have liked to see them kiss at the end.

Millennial who cant afford avocado's and house, some good songs dad song and rap were my favourite, a good story line

While I'm a little sick of everyone talking about Millenials and avacados, Cruel World Productions establish within seconds that they're the perfect mouthpiece for this societal issue. AVACA-DON'T is an awesome musical, with great catchy songs and a real grasp on storytelling. There's a lot of great stuff in this film, and I fully expect to see Cruel World in the city finals a few more times in the future!