Peter Allen: The Boy from Oz

No doubt the success of the recent Broadway musical The Boy from Oz, starring Hugh Jackman as the famed Australian singer-songwriter, explains the re-release of this highly laudatory portrait, made for Aussie TV in 1995, three years after Allen's death from AIDS. Produced by Ben Gannon, a co-creator of the Broadway hit, Peter Allen: The Boy from Oz features a wealth of archival footage—television clips of Allen's early years as half of an Everly Brothers-style singing duo, his sets with friend and mentor Judy Garland (whose daughter Liza Minnelli he briefly married), home movies, excerpts from his New York performances (including sold-out concerts at Radio City Music Hall), and segments from an Australian TV profile. There's also an assortment of interviews, both with Allen himself and with friends and admirers such as Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters, Lily Tomlin and Ann-Margret. Despite all this, the film remains pretty much a surface affair—a panegyric that, for instance, glides rather quickly over the disastrous failure of Allen's 1989 musical, Legs Diamond. Nonetheless, there are still fans out there who love Allen's buoyant if repetitive tunes, and his music is well represented here, even if it hasn't aged all that gracefully. An optional purchase. Aud: P. (F. Swietek)