Watch this everyone. I’m gonna Kevin Bacon a direct line from The Lord of the Rings to The Breaker Upperers. LOTR director Peter Jackson filmed a lot of this movie in New Zealand, and helped blast off the new Zealand film industry. From there we get Taika Waititi, Bret McKenzie, and Jermaine Clement, who have become Oscar Winners, Marvel Directors, and TV stars/showrunners. That level of awareness spawned the next generation of New Zealand filmmakers, including the Breaker Upperers Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek, in which Clement plays a character. BAM! Thankfully, The Breaker Upperers is as delightful as the other irreverent New Zealand fare by those other talents: a promising stateside debut via Netflix.
The Breaker Upperers is a business run by two best friends, Mel and Jen (Sami and van Beek). They act as intermediaries for couples on the verge of breaking up, usually because the hirer is too scared to do it themselves. After a few brutal jobs, Mel starts to get cold feet, wanting to do something more positive, and maybe start a romance with Jordan (James Rolleston), a recent client. Jordan sees this as a loss of a friend and business partner, but she’s also got her own problems being stuck in a rut while everyone else has grown up around her.
The secret sauce of this comedy is the Broad City Lite appeal of Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek. These two have clearly been friends for a while, and the first 40 minutes of them going on wacky break up adventures, pub crawls, karaoke events, and impromptu stripteases is just a delight to behold and laugh at. Like any pair, the combination works: Sami’s got an effortless enthusiasm and innocence which plays crazy well off of van Beek’s world weary cynicism and mild desperation. Underneath their rat at at is a shared fear of being alone, which draws the two of them back to each other. They’re the stars the movie revolves around and keep the movie afloat when it gets mired in cliches from time to time.
Like Jermaine Clement’s appearance does for The Breaker Uppers, the two women also introduce us to some other new faces I would like to see more of in years to come. James Rolleston has that doofus energy Billy Magnussen brings to Game Night, or Manny Jacinto to The Good Place. Everything he says makes sense, but is so poorly phrased you laugh almost every time. Celia Pacquola is great playing a down on her luck break up who also has a hidden party side, of all the other characters, she appears to have the most ways her career can go. But I probably enjoyed Ana Scotney the most, playing Jordan’s ex girlfriend. She’s got that street talking wisdom simultaneously mixed with naivete that would think you can solve problems by dancing them out with your homies. She completely owns the screen when she’s out there; even Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek get out of the way in the third act to give her center stage.
Netflix really knows what it is doing. Giving two funny New Zealand women the time and space to create a delightful under 1.5 hour comedy will give themselves street cred giving a platform for movies from other places, and expose people across the world to the talent evident in Sami and van Beek. I look forward to more collaborations, until we get a Flight of the Conchords/Breaker Upperer mash up directed by Peter Jackson.