The Dish (2000)

Two Geeks and a GIT Classic Movie Reviews

The second film in the pairing of Australian comedies suggested by Patreon supporter and friend Julian Dunmurphy, sees the directorial and writing crew of "The Castle" reunited to tell the story of how the little town of Parkes, Australia became the reason around 650 million people worldwide were able to watch the historic Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969! In 2000's "The Dish," we follow Dr. Cliff Buxton (Sam Neill), head of the Parkes Radio Telescope, as he prepares to work with NASA on the Apollo 11 mission. Assisting him are Russ Mitchell (Kevin Harrington) and Glenn Latham (Tom Long). The arrival of NASA representative Al Burnett (Patrick Warburton) causes some dissention in the ranks, but they're able to get things running smoothly, especially once they're informed that, apart from NASA's dish in California, they will be the only other dish on the planet to be used to keep in contact with Apollo 11! Things are going well until a chance power-outage causes them to lose not only their carefully-programmed computers, but Apollo 11 itself! How they handle such an enormous setback is the rest of the film. While all of this is going on, however, the town is reeling from being in the spotlight and trying to figure out how to handle all the VIP dignitaries that arrive because of Parkes' participation in the mission! And the gents reveal which two films they'll be reviewing to pay tribute to the late, great James Earl Jones!