As with other recent 'youth' movies created by ill informed 40 year old men in Australia: WOLF CREEK, THUNDERSTRUCK, GARAGE DAYS and the truly disgraceful SAMPLE PEOPLE, this film cutely titled DECK DOGZ also suffers from the same major flaw: there isn't ten teenagers anywhere who would pay the $10 it costs for that age group to see it in a cinema. And why would they. If you saw the trailer you would groan. Compiled with antisocial fool characters who have stupid names and contrived clothes like some shopping list of wacky ideas thought up by drunk middle aged skate shop owners late one Friday night at a Chinese restaurant, DECK DOGZ is apparently supposed to appeal to 10-16 year old boys who go to multiplex cinemas. Well they do but not to this: they go to multi million dollar American CGI extravaganzas that cost the same ticket price. DECK DOGZ looks exactly like what it is: the older generation's idea of what teens do....which is enough to make any 10-16 year old boy avoid at all costs.. It looks contrived and it is - and kids see right through it. As a result it dies in ten seconds at the box office and someone is apparently shocked. As with gun / chase films, these pix are made better by the Yanks and are an embarrassment when fashioned into some local ripoff. Like those films mentioned above, DECK DOGZ smacks of misinformed opportunism and is unable to compete in the very market for which it was intended. Is is better than any similar imported film? No. And that simply is why kids avoid it. And that is why it should have not been made in the first place. The makers of this film should have known that if they had bothered to do any market research. They obviously didn't and this is the result: box office failure, a waste of resources and irritation. A lesson still not yet learned by the used car salesmen who try make exploitative teen films in Australia. Sam Katzmen, they ain't. Cormans either. Groan.
