The 5 Overlooked Roles of Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman’s Humble Beginnings (Paperback Hero, 1999)
While I was browsing through Hugh’s filmography after being assigned this article, I was curious about the movie because of its poster. I found the poster embarrassingly hilarious that I thought about looking for this movie being played somewhere and lo and behold it was in Youtube. The film stars Claudia Karvan and Hugh Jackman and it tells the story of Jack who writes romance novels while working as a truck driver. Embarrassed about his hobby, he uses his friend Ruby’s name when he sends his novel to a publisher. Things become complicated when the book turns out to be a hit among the publication office now Jack must convince Ruby to drive all the way to Sydney with him to help be the face and sell the book to the public.
I feel like it was interesting how they brought up that this truck driver writing romantic trash novels is afraid of coming out with this his work, but they never really present that as a real problem and went on with the romantic angle. Which makes me wonder what if they made this in the 2010s where we could have some discussion about issues like toxic masculinity? Anyways, much like Kate & Leopold it’s a reminder of how feel good movies were simply feel good movies at the time where both actors are utterly charming. Furthermore you just try and not to question plot points too much and just enjoy these actors work off of each other. For what it’s worth it was a slowburn yet cliched movie but I enjoyed it enough because of the characters.
GP Manalo
