New Zealand films do occasionally try the patience of their supporters. Yes, we've made some terrific movies, but out in the general Cinema of Unease, there's a tendency towards the glum and the grumpy.
With one glorious exception. Hooray for Samoan films, I say!
Films like The Orator, Sione's Wedding, Three Wise Cousins - and let's throw in their Tongan cousin, Red White and Brass - have no interest in shaking their fists at anyone, or solemnly examining their own navels for brilliant insights, or even teaching us valuable life-lessons, though they occasionally do that anyway.
They've got one aim. To entertain.
And Tinā is the latest - and possibly greatest - Samoan entertainment to date. But it starts dark.
Tinā means mother, and we meet Mareta, a teacher at a low decile school in Christchurch. Her daughter is about to audition for an important music scholarship and wants a bit of reassurance. But Mareta is about to face her greatest challenge.
The second Christchurch earthquake not only saw the death of her daughter, but also the loss of her Christian faith.
From being a dedicated teacher and community leader, Mareta locks herself away. Four years later, her friends - including WINZ case-worker Sio - are worried about her.
Sio urges Mareta to apply for a teacher's aide job at an exclusive - and very white - school.
It doesn't go well. Colourfully-dressed Mareta and a 50 shades of grey Christchurch private school are hardly a great fit. But the retiring headmaster Alan pulls rank and to everyone's surprise, she gets the job.
The first few classes are marked by a decided lack of chemistry, until one day Mareta and troubled teen Sophie bond over the playground piano. Mareta wonders if music may do the same for uptight rich kids as it did for under-privileged poor ones.
NZ film 'Tinā' tells Samoan teacher's moving story after loss in CHCH earthquake Photo: 818
What's needed is good, old-fashioned Samoan family values - hard work, respect for your elders, and most of all, do what Tinā tells you, or meet the jandal!
The jandal bit is down-played a little in the actual movie, though it gets the biggest laugh among Samoan audiences.
That combination of deep love and total terror of stepping out line seems to dominate most Samoan-movie families.
The choir takes off. The kids' initial suspicion of the alien invader turns to love and respect - for Mareta and all things Samoan.
Mareta is played, impressively, by Anapela Pola-tai-vao, whose long-term experience as both an actor and a teacher - she says she's played mums since she was 20 - comes in handy here.
But writer-director Miki Magasiva has given her a dream part - full of comedy, tragedy, conflict, inspiration and it has to be said, some generous dollops of schmaltz.
Everything, in other words, that Samoan family audiences - and quite a few non-Samoan ones too - want in a movie. I can't remember the last time I heard so many people quietly weeping into their hankies at a New Zealand film, or laughing out loud at other times.
And may I put in a quick word for the kids in the choir here, by the way? I'm told they do all their own singing, even the featured actors which surprised me.
It's a tale as old as Fame, of course - or any of those high-school musical films - but given a uniquely Samoan spin.
Tinā is one for the whole, national family in other words, and one - appropriately - just like mother used to make.
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