Ja’mie, We Already Knew You
Eight years on, is our
homegrown queen teen bitch still (to use her own parlance) Ja’miezing?
Ja’mie King was back in the
day. She was fresh, funny and fantastic when she burst onto our screens in We Can Be Heroes in 2005 and still had
it going on in the follow up Summer
Heights High as the ultimate grotesque with alter ego, the uber talented Chris Lilley
pulling the strings.
"There’s nothing really new in her school bag of tricks."
But take away the new pop
culture references and abbreviated teen slang and it’s as if time has stood
still in Ja’mie’s third outing Private
School Girl.
She’s still a fan of humpy
dance moves, still fires off abusive quips like a firecracker, still spoilt
rotten, still a cradle snatcher, still politically incorrect, still delusional,
still the ultimate grotesque.
There’s nothing really new
in her school bag of tricks.
And the laughs have become
scarce. They’re more like scoffs at just how horrible she’s become and just how
low she’ll go. Last week she concocted the ‘A Boy In Need Is A Boy Indeed’ program, shamelessly parading around her ‘povo’ African project Kwami and her Christian values in a
bid to win The Hilford Medal.
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| Twerk that Miley |
Sure that was always the gag.
Lilley’s characters’ foibles most often shine a light on society’s own
prejudices. But with her own show, Ja’mie is pretty much in every scene and the
act is starting to feel as stale as last week’s ‘quiche’. Borrowed that term
too, Ja’mie.
It can’t be easy to find
something new in a well established, well loved character even if you are the exceptionally
talented Lilley, though Barry Humphries has managed to keep his Dame Edna Everage
endearing for well over half a century. You can’t help thinking that after the
mixed response to Lilley’s last project, the bold Angry Boys that he’s retreated to safer ground.
Miss King could well do with
another fish-out-of water interlude a la Summer
Heights High. Perhaps her mooted gap year in 'povo' Africa where she could
really get those bangs dirty, or a comeuppance in the cut throat world of PR?
