| Director | P. J. Hogan |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy drama, coming-of-age film |
| Runtime | 116 min |
| Country | Australia, United States |
| Box office | $4.4 million |
Shirley Moochmoore is a sweet misfit and mother of five daughters who are all convinced they suffer from various mental illnesses. Living in the Australian coastal suburb of Dolphin Heads and married to the often absent local politician Barry, Shirley retreats into a fantasy world of her favourite musical, The Sound of Music. After she manically orders a huge amount of furniture, telling neighbours her husband won it on a TV game show, she's sent to a mental institution. Barry, in his embarrassment, instructs his daughters to say she's "on holiday in Wollongong".
Barry enlists a mysterious, surly hitchhiker named Shaz to care for his family. Shaz terrifies the girls into obedience with her ocker accent, her dog Ripper and the knife she keeps in her cowboy boot, but she also encourages them to stand up to local bullies including their smarmy Aunt Doris, their snobbish, house-proud neighbour Nancy and the two mean girls who run the local coffee shop, who always forced Shirley to eat unwanted donuts. Shaz's philosophy is that the 'normal' world is insane, and so-called 'crazy' people are the normal ones. She leads the Moochmore girls on a dawn climb of a nearby mountain. From its peak, they each select a stone to symbolise their newfound ability to overcome adversity.
Shaz also encourages their eldest daughter Coral to pursue a romance with Trout, a hunky, guitar-strumming lifeguard at the aquatic theme park where Coral works for an eccentric shark hunter named Trevor Blundell. Trevor had earlier disrupted Trout clumsily kissing Coral in the shark exhibit; but thanks to the confidence Shaz instills in Coral, Trout genuinely falls for her, and the pair spend a romantic evening together riding waterslides in the nude after the park has closed.
After forcing Barry to eat a home-cooked meal with his family, and to seek treatment for his daughter Michelle's genuine schizophrenia, Shaz reunites the Moochmore family at the mental institution. Shirley tells Barry that she knows of his habitual infidelities and will no longer support his political career. Barry begs her to appear at his campaign launch.
Trevor reveals that Shaz is actually his mentally disturbed ex-wife. He tells Coral that Shaz is convinced the spirit of their daughter, who died in a boating accident, is trapped inside the giant preserved shark in Trevor's exhibit. Trevor is trying to move on with his life, but Shaz has repeatedly refused psychiatric treatment and instead has followed Trevor to several new towns, working her way into the trust of locals each time. Barry calls the police to have Shaz arrested, and she is confined to the same mental institution Shirley had been.
The girls decide to break Shaz out of the mental institution. They tie up Trevor and help Shaz steal his pickled shark. Tortured by the gentle guitar songs of his guard, Trout, Trevor manages to escape just in time to intercept and reason with Shaz as she attempts to free the shark from its tank and 'release' it into the ocean. The shark tank plunges into the water, its attached rope entangling Trevor's legs, and Shaz dives after it, ostensibly to save him. Neither of them surfaces.
The Moochmore family perform a triumphant, Von Trapp-style onstage singalong of "Edelweiss" at Barry's campaign launch. The girls' aunt Doris, whose hobby is making elaborate costumes for porcelain dolls, has a final confrontation with Shaz in her doll display room. "I lived!" Shaz screams, then pulls down her jeans and lights a fart with her cigarette lighter, setting fire to the room and the entire house. Then she races out the front door, kicking over a garbage bin, which has left her able to win in triumph.