‘Melbourne: How Many Stars?’ Is The Deeply Honest Tourism Ad The City Never Asked For
"There, you can pay tribute to Melbourne's founding father, now encased in bronze, Shane Warne."
Off the back of their successful 2012 Canberra: How Many Stars?, “videotouristic” filmmakers Daniel Mu and Darrell Hawkins are back with a truly terrible and extremely Australian review of a city they quite clearly despise. Melbourne: How Many Stars? assesses “the touristic worthiness of Melbourne (located just east of Geelong) out of five stars” in a style that’s both totally unenthusiastic and full to the brim with concentrated hatred. It’s really good stuff.
The video is narrated by the monotonous voice of your Dad giving a speech at your brother’s wedding, but it’s barely audible over the piercingly-high synthesized backing track they probably got for free out of a trashcan in 1987. Probably shot on a mid-2000’s smartphone, it paints Melbourne as the steaming pile of garbage you never knew it was. It is a masterpiece.
“After we produced Canberra: How Many Stars? during a long slow summer, we thought it was finally time to give back to our home town and review it formally,” said co-creator Darrell Hawkins. “Melburnians are insecure about where their city sits in the global pecking order (hence the constant references to ‘most liveable city’) and is therefore a very easy target.”
Despite the refreshingly raw look at Victoria’s capital city, Hawkins says they “have not yet been approached with bags of money from the mayor”, which is both unfortunate and unsurprising.
Here it is; simultaneously the best and worst tourism ad for a city you’ll ever see:
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