Coffee, Tea or Me?

In a similar format to her earlier "War Stories" documentary, Gaylene Preston interviews former (and one current) air hostess who have worked for Air New Zealand and its predecessors, TEAL and NAC, and splices their comments with a mix of publicity film footage, training film footage and TV news footage. There is little original about any of it - even the title has been used before by at least two other films and a book - and reminiscences of this type from former hostesses have regularly been broadcast on New Zealand National Radio. The themes which are mostly presented here are obviously those of particular interest to the producers, namely feminism, sex discrimination and women's industrial fights. Thus the film is in turn most likely to appeal to similarly interested people - if you are an aviation enthusiast, this isn't a whole lot here for you. There is an adequate amount of time spent about the glamour (or otherwise) of the job, attitudes of male colleagues, uniforms and grooming in the first half; thereafter it generates into a tedious discussion about the union's industrial fights with the airline during the 1980s. If the director and producer had instead continued with presentation of what the air hostesses actually did, how they trained, included the peculiarities of particular aircraft types, interactions with passengers and how the image corresponded with reality this would have been a whole lot more interesting.