AllMovie

Little seen and less admired, this black comedy from the director of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert would have functioned better if it had sold its humor with less stridency. Clever ideas about the nature of community and civilization lurk within Michael Thomas' busy script. But filmmaker Stephan Elliott spends so much time trying to be outrageous that the entire effort sinks under the weight of its determined coarseness. Protagonist Johnathon Schaech, chiselled and rather vacant, fails to locate the cheerful menace he displayed in Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation. As his shotgun bride, Susie Porter settles for madcap shrillness without ever locating some vein of human vulnerability inside her despicable character. Rod Taylor, too, comes off completely one-note, despite his patriarch character's convincing bluster. In the end, it's simply the good guys versus the bad guys without a trace of believably nuanced morality. The counterpoint between show-tune singalongs and Lord of the Flies depravity may account for the bulk of Welcome to Woop Woop's lazy irony, but the blunt edges continue in almost every aspect of this film. Perhaps if Rachel Griffiths hadn't been relegated to an opening-scene cameo, she might have wrested some subtlety from Thomas' script. Alas, such casting still wouldn't have been able to salvage this unfortunate misfire.