Short Film Review: "Toni Fitzgerald's Cult Following" Is A Kooky Comedy About Finding Your Voice
Australian writer/director/producer Felicity Pickering makes her directorial debut with Toni Fitzgerald’s Cult Following. The film combines pop culture and cults into a zany, absurdist comedy about one woman’s journey to find her voice.
Toni Fitzgerald is a stand up comic. The only issue is she just isn't funny. Not to her workmates, not to her roommate, not even to her mum. So when she stumbles upon a cult that doesn't approve of popular culture, she's offered an opportunity that she can't refuse…
If you take the premise of the Danny Boyle directed Yesterday, broaden its narrowed focus from Beatles tunes to all-things comedy (as it relates to popular culture), and lather it up in absurdity, Aussie charm, and a DIY aesthetic, you’d have something that resembles Felicity Pickering’s bizarrely titled Toni Fitzgerald’s Cult Following. The film follows the titular Toni Fitzgerald (played by Julia Rorke) as she struggles to make it as a stand-up comedian. Normally, you think of a filmmaker’s name appearing before a title — like John Carpenter’s The Fog or Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds — but that fact that Toni includes her name on the proverbial marquee adds another layer to her character.
Toni yearns to be in the spotlight, and she’s desperate to do whatever she needs to do to make that happen — even if that means becoming someone she’s not. Instead of honing her craft, she — like most of us — starts looking for the path of least resistance; a cracked window, an unlocked door, some kind of easy way in. When a burgeoning cult with a ban on pop culture catches her attention, she sees her opportunity and strikes. The cult — called the Movement for the Restoration of Social Order — prohibits TV, film, and the internet, so they’re oblivious to the hilarious gags and jokes that pop culture has to offer. Using this to her advantage, Toni steals material from Chaplin, Arrested Development, Seinfeld, and others, to become the cult’s beloved superstar.
Toni’s rise to cult stardom is short lived — like they say, “easy come, easy go” — but the knowledge she obtains through her experience is invaluable. Even though she was operating under the guise of another performer, the journey allowed her to discover herself and her voice, which was the missing piece to her stand-up puzzle. Pickering ties up the plot threads with a neat bow, but Toni’s journey feels slightly incomplete. We can see the noticeable shift in her confidence, but Pickering never allows us to see Toni triumph on her own accord, or observe the crowd respond to her material. This doesn’t make the journey all for nought, but it does lessen the impact of its destination.
Pickering and company are fully committed to the silliness and absurdity that give the film its zesty flavor, and they find clever ways to bend their limited budget to their benefit and achieve the script’s high ambitions, adding an element of DIY charm in the process. The broad strokes of the story comply to its absurdity, but the granular details don’t always add up. For instance, even though the cult denies pop culture, it’s unlikely that they were born into it, meaning they would have some knowledge of it (but they appear to be born yesterday). There’s also a fundamental irony that never gets addressed: the cult shies away from “popular” culture, but they wind up creating their own form of it, which is fully embraced. Pickering doesn’t really use the cult or pop culture to any meaningful effect either; they are more so means to an end for Toni’s personal journey.
Bolstered by the solid performances from its cast of up-and-coming Australian comedians, the zany antics of Toni Fitzgerald’s Cult Following will have you charmed with laughter. More about the journey than its overall destination, Pickering’s debut is as much a cautionary tale about being a fraud as it is a a celebration of making bad choices — provided that you learn and grow from them, of course. Much like Toni, Pickering is still honing her craft and finding her voice, but she shows great promise in her ability to bring her ambitious vision to life. We look forward to whatever she cooks up next!
Recommendation: If you like absurd comedy with some DIY charm, give Toni Fitzgerald’s Cult Following a watch. You can check out the film in its entirety here!
Rating: 3 posters outta 5.
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