Tomorrow, When The War Began
If you have never heard of Tomorrow, When the War Began, it is probably because you are not Australian.

If you have never heard of Tomorrow, When the War Began, it is probably because you are not Australian. Meaningless and grammatically awkward, it is the kind of title you might find on a straight-to-DVD disaster movie, or some middle-of-the-road computer game from the nineties. If someone mentioned it to you, it wouldn’t register amongst the plethora of similar sounding stuff your brain has already not bothered to remember. But if you were Australian, the name might well hold more significance. Tomorrow, When the War Began is actually the title of the first book in a series of novels which is staggeringly popular Down Under. Having sold copies by the millions, and even been taught in schools, it is much-loved by many Australians who read it growing up. And now they have made it into a film.

The plot follows a gang of implausibly attractive small-town teenagers (who prove equally implausibly adept at handling automatic weapons – but more on that later) led by a supposedly every-day girl called Ellie (played by Caitlin Stasey off of Neighbours). Things start off fairly boringly, with a camping trip into the bush accompanied by the inevitable teenage romances and dramas we are well-used to watching. But then things start to get a bit weird. On returning home, the gang discover that Australia has been invaded by an aggressive foreign force (from what country, or for what purpose, is never revealed), and their friends and family have all been imprisoned or killed. Regular, every-day kind of kids that they are, Ellie and her friends decide that their only option is to single-handedly fight this vast, anonymous (though definitely Asian-looking) army in order to save their friends, families and the country they love (cue implausible use of automatic weapons, as mentioned above).

Now, we all like Aussies (unless we are playing them at cricket). But what does it say about a nation’s psyche that a book read and held dear by so many depicts the unlikely invasion of the country by an evil foreign force? No wonder they get so tetchy about border control. If not xenophobic, the concept is certainly ridiculous, and Tomorrow, When the War Began tests one’s ability to suspend belief if nothing else. If you can get past the implausibility of modern-day Australia being invaded out of the blue, you will also need to accept that a group of kids can fight (and win) against said invading army with its jets, helicopters and dune-buggies. Action films have always pushed the boundaries of plausibility, but one’s enjoyment of Tomorrow, When the War Began is entirely dependent on the leap of faith you are prepared to take. There is no satire here, and only occasional humour (most of which falls flat); you either have to take the invasion thing seriously and enjoy the action that ensues, or not at all.

If you are prepared to run with it, there is a half-decent action flick to be enjoyed here. All the shooting, explosions and car chases are suitably exciting, and there are moments of genuine tension. I say half-decent, though, because, paranoid premise aside, Tomorrow, When the War Began has a whole other set of failings. Dialogue is vapid (and frequently excruciatingly clunky), saved only by the young cast who, although technically lacking, are a fairly likeable bunch. The film also suffers from the common affliction of trying to compress the contents of a novel into 90 minutes. Few high-profile book-to-film adaptations have managed to solve this problem (clocking in at around 10 hours, Peter Jackson didn’t even try with Lord of the Rings) and Tomorrow, When the War Began doesn’t break new ground in this respect. All too familiarly, the film feels like a series of set pieces crammed together, with little description of how each climax is arrived at and only the barest minimum of character development (there are eight members of Ellie’s gang, but there is a good reason why she is the only one I have mentioned).

If you have read the book, you might be willing to forgive all that for the sake of being able to see your young heroes brought to life on the big screen, but such adaptations usually have the opposite effect, and it is difficult to see how Tomorrow, When the War Began would buck the trend. There is not much here for non-fans of the book either, which makes the film difficult to recommend to all but those with a deep-seated paranoia about foreign invasion to feed. Like its title, Tomorrow, When the War Began is clumsy, awkward and ultimately forgettable.