MOVIE REVIEW : ‘The Efficiency Expert’ a Mild Aussie Comedy

In the 1950s, Britain’s Ealing Studios turned out a series of small-scale comedies featuring Alec Guinness that were classics of dry wit. The wit in movies like “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Man in the White Suit” was so dry it was practically kindling. The Australian comedy “The Efficiency Expert” (selected theaters) is obviously an attempt to duplicate the rumply, tart pleasures of those Ealing comedies. It has its charms but it’s a surpassingly mild experience. It’s a tiny chuckle of a comedy.

Anthony Hopkins is the efficiency expert who plays out his days trying to streamline businesses. His practices favor the bottom-line tactics of the hard-liners, but his philosophy isn’t grounded in politics; Hopkins’ Wallace is essentially a neat-freak of imperial proportions. The joke is that he approaches all human transaction in the same way. His wife, feeling neglected, is about to leave him and he’s too oblivious to know.

Even though “The Efficiency Expert” (rated PG) is set in the mid ‘60s, it’s clearly meant to parallel the cut-throat business cultures of today. When Wallace is assigned to modernize a venerable family-owned moccasin company staffed by friendly eccentrics, he’s heartily received. We get to know the regulars: Kim (Russell Crowe), who schemes to overturn the boss (Alwyn Kurts); young Carey (Ben Mendelsohn), who pines for the boss’s hard-as-nails daughter (Rebecca Rigg); Wendy (Toni Colette), who pines for Carey. It’s all very folksy and Norman Rockwell-ish. Wallace is drawn into their lives yet he recognizes he’s going to be putting them out of business. He’s like a spy who gets too close to his prey. It’s significant, too, that Wallace is English; he’s an interloper twice over.

The actors are a friendly, convivial lot, and Hopkins gives a tricky, wry performance that putters along on its own steam. The plot resemblance to “Other People’s Money” may be more than coincidental, but director Mark Joffe and screenwriters Max Dann and Andrew Knight keep the film buzzing with Australian “types.”

None of it amounts to a whole lot by the end, though. One of the joys of those Ealing comedies was the sparkle of their construction. They were as carefully and delicately assembled as music boxes, and they weren’t cloying. “The Efficiency Expert” is, and it reaches for a social conscience when it should be reaching for more laughs. It needs an efficiency expert for comedy.

‘The Efficiency Expert’

Anthony Hopkins: Wallace

Ben Mendelsohn: Carey

Toni Collette: Wendy

Alwyn Kurts: Mr. Ball

A Miramax Films presentation. Director Mark Joffe. Producers Richard Brennan and Timothy White. Screenplay by Max Dann and Andrew Knight. Cinematographer Ellery Ryan. Editor Nick Beauman. Costumes Tess Schofield. Production design Chris Kennedy. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG.