Movie Review - The Dish

Yesterday, I finally pulled out a movie I'd bought on the spur of the moment and watched it. The movie is called The Dish. It is about a group of Australians and one American who run a communications relay station in Parkes, Australia. This station became the primary communications station which forwarded to the world television images of Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon. However, as the movie tells, there were some major glitches and the historic moon walk was almost NOT televised. These glitches as well as struggles between the Australians and the American give the movie its conflict. The movie also is a time capsule of how things were in Australia in the 60's as well as the world. To those of us who find laptop computers and cell phones blase, it is an eye opener to see a time when the standard calculator was a slide rule! It also gives us a benchmark on how far we've come since that Armstrong's historic moment. Since that time, we've sent mechanized probes that have explored the Martian surface and explorer spacecraft to the very edge of our solar system. There is talk of sending a manned mission to Mars. The mind boggles how far we've come and yet the first truly great step was when Armstrong stepped on the moon. Space travel from that point was no longer the stuff of science fiction writers. This movie gives us picture of those incredible tumultuous times.

I believe the movie was created for the Australian market but I think Americans would enjoy the movie as well. It shows some of the funny quirks of the Australians as well as some of the differences between American and Australian english. Repeatedly, one of the Australians on the team have to translate for the American when one of the other Australians starts using Australian English terms. It can be very amusing. Overall, I'd rate the movie as very nice. It is something to watch on a day when you want to want to watch something relaxing and funny. I'm not sure how easy it would be to be able to find the movie at your local video rental shop but, if you can't find it there, you should be able to buy it cheaply at Movies Unlimited or some other big internet store that offers lots of movies for sale. I believe when I bought the movie, it cost less than $10.